| Theory of mind refers to children’s understanding of their own and others’ mental states(beliefs,desires,emotions,knowledge,etc.).As a social cognitive skill,theory of mind plays an important role in children’s social development.As for the influencing factors of theory of mind,some studies have found that whether siblings have an impact on children’s theory of mind,so the "sibling effect" hypothesis is proposed.As for whether and when the "sibling effect" exists,researchers have put forward different hypotheses.Among them,some researchers proposed that compared with the only child,the existence of siblings improves the level of social interaction of children,thus leading to differences between the children with siblings and no sibling.At the level of social interaction,what is the relationship between sibling conflict and the Theory of Mind? Some researchers proposed that sibling conflict is related to depression and aggressive behavior in adolescent.Some researchers believe that sibling conflict can promote children’s understanding of other people’s mental states and thus improve the development of Theory of Mind.This study suggests that parents play a key role in the inconsistency of research results.Studies on parents’ coping styles to sibling conflicts also believe that different parental management have different effects:negative coping styles will intensify the negative impact of conflict on the theory of mind.Summarizing previous studies,we found the following deficiencies: 1.Most studies use false belief task and unexpected transfer task to represent theory of mind,but the mental state of theory of mind is not only false belief,but also intention and emotion.2.Most studies on parental management used parent-reported methods,but this fails to capture more dynamic information such as intensity and emotional experience.Therefore,this study selected preschoolers were 3 to 6 years of age to explore the influence of sibling and social interaction on children’s theory of mind,as well as sibling conflict and parental management on children’s theory of mind.We used six tasks to evaluate theory of mind: diverse desires,knowledge access,diverse beliefs,false belief tasks,hidden emotions,and intentional understanding.Parents reported the amount of time the children interacted with their peers during the week.The results of the study found that:(1)there is no link between siblings and theory of mind;(2)the link between of siblings and theory of mind is affected by the amount of time children spent playing with peers: For children with fewer opportunities for social interaction,having siblings contributes to their theory of mind development.Study 2 used combination of questionnaire and observation to explore the relationship between sibling conflict and theory of mind,and to test the moderating effect of parental interference in children’s conflict on the relationship between sibling conflict and theory of mind.Parents reported the frequency and emotional intensity of children’s conflicts and their own interference in conflict by filling out questionnaires online;semi-structured observation induces conflicts between children by setting up three activities.The sibling conflict(e.g.frequency,duration,intensity),and different parental responses to sibling conflict were used to examine the effects.The results show that:(1)the frequency of verbal conflict reported by parents is positively associated with children’s theory of mind;observed conflict duration is negatively correlated with children’s theory of mind;(2)the relation between of parent-reported frequency of verbal conflict and theory of mind was moderated by child-centered management: when parents used more child-centered management,the higher the frequency of verbal conflict,the better the development of theory of mind;(3)the relation between observed conflict frequency and theory of mind is moderated by the parental distraction management,that is,when parents frequently use distraction to deal with children’s conflicts,the more frequent the conflict occurs,the worse the children’s theory of mind development;(3)The effect of observed conflict intensity on theory of mind is moderated by parental verbal commands management: when parents frequently used verbal commands to deal with children’s conflicts,children’s theory of mind developed better when the conflict was more intense.In conclusion,the results of this study found that the presence of siblings does promote the development of children’s theory of mind,but this promotion disappears when children have more opportunities playing with their peers,that is,for children with no siblings,peer interaction also can make up for the lack of sibling interaction.For families with two children,the relationship between sibling conflict and theory of mind will be moderated by parental responses to sibling conflict: when parents frequently use negative interference,sibling conflict will have a negative impact on children’s theory of mind;When parents use positive interference,sibling conflict will have a positive impact on the development of children’s theory of mind. |
PDF Full Text Request