3-6-year-old Children's Cognition Of Imaginary Partners And The Development Of Theory Of Mind

Imaginary companion(IC)as a kind of pretend game,is a common phenomenon among preschool children,research on imaginary companion can better understand the cognitive development of children.Theory of mind is one of the most important abilities of children's cognitive development,in which false belief is considered to be the sign of children's acquiring theory of mind.Some studies have shown that children with imaginary companion have better development of theory of mind,but there were also opposite results.According to the social domain theory,the study of theory of mind can also start from the two domains of moral rules and conventional rules.Moreover,previous studies are basically based on the classical false belief paradigm and do not cover different social rules in children's life.Therefore,this study explored the cognition of imaginary companion and the development of theory of mind and the relationship between them,and based on the social domain theory,this study further discussed the development of theory of mind from moral domain and conventional domain.In the first study,preschoolers aged from 3 to 6 were asked to report their cognition of the imaginary companion phenomenon and the details of their interaction with imaginary companion.The results showed that:(1)The proportion of imaginary companion in children aged 3-6 years was 68.6%,and there was no significant difference about age group and gender;(2)Among children aged 3-6 years with imaginary companion,the proportion of invisible friend accounted for more(54.5%),followed by personifed object(45.5%).The proportion of invisible friend increased with age,and the proportion of personifed object decreased with age,and there was a significant gender difference between them;(3)Children tend to choose imaginary companions of the same gender with themselves,and boys were more likely to choose imaginary companions older than themselves;(4)In terms of the characteristics about children getting along with their imaginary companions,children tend to follow their own command when getting along with their imaginary companions but they also want their imaginary companions to be more powerful,and they keep a certain frequency to play with them,and could abide the basic social rules;(5)57.1% of the children aged3-6 years had imaginary role play,and there was a significant age effect.In the second study,preschoolers aged from 3 to 6 were tested with three tasks of theory of mind to explore the development of preschoolers' theory of mind in the domain of moral rule and conventional rule.The results showed that:(1)Preschoolers aged from 3 to 6 years old showed significant age effect in three tasks of theory of mind;(2)Most children aged from 3 to 6 years old were basically able to make preliminary moral and conventional judgments;(3)In the different belief task of different domains,the passing rate of children's theory of mind in conventional domain was significantly better than that in moral domain.In the third study,through the analysis of the common valid data in the above two studies,the relationship between the imaginary companion phenomenon and the development of theory of mind of preschool children aged 3-6 was explored.The results showed that :(1)Children with different types of imaginary companion had significant differences in theory of mind tasks,in which children with invisible friend performed better;(2)Children with imaginary companion of different ages had significant differences in the development of theory of mind in the moral domain,in which children with imaginary companion younger than themselves were significantly better than children with imaginary companion of the same age as themselves.In summary,the following conclusions can be drawn :(1)Imagination companion is a common phenomenon among children aged 3-6 years and was not affected by age group and gender.However,different types of imaginary companion have their own characteristics,and children show differences in age and gender when getting along with them;(2)The abilities of theory of mind of 3-6 years old children is improved with the increase of age,the development of children's theory of mind in the domain of conventional rules is better than that in the domain of moral rules.(3)The different types of imaginary companion of children aged 3-6 years are more correlated with the theory of mind,and the the invisible friend played a more positive role.