A Study On The Relationship Between Children’s Pattern Ability And Theory Of Mind

Pattern ability and theory of mind play an important role in the development of children’s reasoning in the physical field and the social field.The pattern ability is concentrated on the ability of mathematical logic reasoning,while the theory of mind is concentrated on the ability of prediction and reasoning of human psychological activities.Therefore,these two reasoning abilities are important components of children’s cognitive and social development.Is children’s reasoning ability in the physical field parallel to that in the social field? In the previous relevant literature,there were different views: the parallel view of two kinds of reasoning development、the non-parallel view of two kinds of reasoning development,and the non-binary parallel or opposite view of two kinds of reasoning development.It is very important for preschool education to explore the relationship between children’s two reasoning abilities.If the development of pattern ability and theory of mind is parallel,it means that whether children’s pattern reasoning ability or children’s theory of mind is cultivated,on the other hand,it can also be improved simultaneously,which will provide a time-saving and labor-saving route for kindergarten practice;On the contrary,the cultivation of children’s two reasoning abilities cannot be replaced by each other.In this study,24 children in a senior class of a public-owned kindergarten in Chengdu were selected as the research objects,and they were divided into experimental group and control group with similar level.Referring to the circular research path of "plan-action-reflection" of action research,children in the experimental group adopt multi-sensory pattern reasoning learning methods such as vision,hearing and kinesthetic,while children in the control group did not take any pattern intervention measures.In this process,the pattern ability and theory of mind of children in the experimental group and the control group were compared,and the research scheme was adjusted in time according to the change level of children’s theory of mind,so as to judge whether the two reasoning abilities developed in parallel.The results showed that the intervention process of presenting patterns in visual,auditory,and kinesthetic forms was effective in improving children’s pattern ability,but this intervention effect could not simultaneously enhance children’s theory of mind;However,If the training content of pattern ability is close to the theory of mind,the training of pattern ability can improve children’s theory of mind simultaneously,which shows that the relationship between pattern ability and theory of mind is not completely parallel or completely non-parallel,and when the training content of the two is close,they are parallel,and vice versa.At the same time,this study further verified whether the test content and evaluation criteria are also factors that affect the parallel development of pattern ability and theory of mind reasoning.So the last step of action research introduced Robbie Case’s research on physical field reasoning and social field reasoning.The test content and evaluation criteria of these two studies are relatively consistent.The results verify that the two reasoning abilities are parallel under this condition.The whole research results show that the intervention effect on children’s pattern reasoning ability cannot replace the promotion of theory of mind when the pattern ability is very different from the training content,test content and evaluation standard of theory of mind;When the pattern ability is closer to various conditions of theory of mind,the two kinds of reasoning are closer to parallel,which verifies the previous non binary parallel or opposite view of the development of reasoning in the two fields of physical and social.Research enlightenment: Children’s curriculum should not only consider the particularity of reasoning content in physical field and social field,but also consider the commonality of two kinds of reasoning ability,so as to promote children’s cognitive transfer between tasks in different content fields.