3-5 Years Old Children’s Selective Trust And Its Relationship With Theory Of Mind

The selective trust refers to ability that children selectively trust the information form more reliable informant according to the accuracy of the information in advance.Specifically, when two informants provide a child with conflicting information, children trust the informant with a demonstrated history of past reliability. The development of the selective trust may contribute to children’s not only the construction of knowledge,but also the development of social behavior.Several lines of evidence suggest that the children’s selective trust influenced by internal and external factors. The current study explores the internal factor, namely, the theory of mind and its relationship with selective trust. DiYanni,Nini,Rheel and Livelli(2011) discovered a positive correlation between the selective trust and understanding of false belief after the control of age factor. However, Pasquini,Corriveau,Koenig and Harris(2007) have not found the relationship between selective trust and false belief.Existing results about the relationship between selective trust and theory of mind are not consistent, and only explore the relationship but not the deeper level of analysis,specifically, whether the development of theory of mind can effectively predict the development of selective trust. Furthermore, we have no idea whether this relationship has a generality in different cultures. These questions need further explore.The present study took 120 3-5 years old children as objects, explored the characteristics of the selective trust and the relationship between the theory-of-mind tasks and selective trust, by using false belief task and conflicting sources paradigm.This study focuses on the deep relationship between selective trust and theory of mind,namely, the predictive effect of theory of mind to selective trust. The results of present study may help us recognize and understand the development features of children’s selective trust better, so as to improve selective trust ability and promote the development of other social skills. The results revealed:(1) 3-5 year-olds’ performance on selective trust increased with age,5 years old children’s ability of selective trust was significantly higher than 4 and 3 years old children’s,4 years old children’s ability of selective trust was significantly higher than 3 years old children’s.(2) there had positivecorrelations between theory-of-mind score and selective trust score. One-dimensional linear regression analysis revealed that, there was a very close relation between theory-of-mind and selective trust, theory of mind each accounted for 48% of the variance in selective trust. From what has been discussed above,we conclude that 3-5year-olds’ performance on selective trust increased with age,and the development of theory-of-mind could predict the development of selective trust,so theory of mind was a inner influencing factor affecting selective trust.Conclusions were as follows:(1) 3-5 year-olds’ performance on selective trust increased with age, 5 years old children’s ability of selective trust was significantly higher than 4 and 3 years old children’s, 4 years old children’s ability of selective trust was significantly higher than 3years old children’s.(2) There had a positive correlation between theory-of-mind and selective trust.The development of theory-of-mind could predict the development of selective trust,so theory of mind was a inner influencing factor affecting selective trust.