Conversations about mental states and theory of mind development during middle childhood: A training study

• Published in: Journal of experimental child psychology 2016-09, Vol.149, p.41-61
• Main Authors: Bianco, Federica, Lecce, Serena, Banerjee, Robin
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Accuracy; Analysis of Variance; Attention - physiology; Child; Child development; Child Development - physiology; Communication; Comprehension - physiology; Conversation; Development; Executive Function; Executive Function - physiology; Female; Humans; Intervention; Knowledge; Male; Mechanism; Middle childhood; Narration; Reading; Social Perception; Studies; Theory; Theory of Mind; Theory of Mind - physiology; Verbal Behavior - physiology; Vocabulary
• ISSN: 0022-0965; 1096-0457
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2015.11.006

•Conversations about the mind were effective in enhancing ToM during middle childhood.•The positive effect of ToM training program generalized to a far-transfer task.•The positive effect of ToM training program was stable over two months.•Conversations about the mind foster the accuracy of mental-state attributions. Despite 30years of productive research on theory of mind (ToM), we still know relatively little about variables that influence ToM development during middle childhood. Recent experimental studies have shown that conversations about the mind affect ToM abilities, but they have not explored the mechanisms underlying this developmental effect. In the current study, we examined two potential mechanisms through which conversations about mental states are likely to influence ToM: an increased frequency of references to mental states when explaining behavior and an increased accuracy of mental-state attributions. To this aim, we conducted a training study in which 101 children were assigned to either an intervention condition or a control condition. The conversation-based intervention was made up of four sessions scheduled over 2weeks. Children completed a battery of assessments before and after the intervention as well as 2months later. The groups were equivalent at Time 1 (T1) for age, family affluence, vocabulary, and executive functions. The ToM group showed an improvement in ToM skills (as evaluated on both the practiced tasks and a transfer task). Mediation analyses demonstrated that the accuracy of mental-state attributions, but not the mere frequency of mental-state references, mediated the positive effect of conversations about the mind on ToM development. Our results indicate that conversational experience can enhance mental-state reasoning not by simply drawing children’s attention to mental states but rather by scaffolding a mature understanding of social situations.