Development of Theory of Mind (ToM) and Its Relation to Their Everyday Performance of Social Communication and Interaction in School-Age Children

PURPOSE: Theory of mind (ToM) is the ability to infer the mental states of self and others, predict behaviors, and react appropriately. In school-aged children, ToM has several developmental components and significantly influences their social lives. Developmental components such as false belief (FB), lie, and irony enable school-aged children to handle complicated social contexts. Therefore, understanding the development of ToM and its relation to everyday social performance in school-aged children is crucial. The purpose of this study was to describe the ToM development of children in lower, middle and upper grades, as well as the relationship between ToM ability and everyday social performance in school-aged children.

DESIGN: This was a descriptive and correlational research study. School-aged children and their caregivers from elementary schools in Taiwan were recruited and grouped by lower, middle and upper grades. Children who had neurodevelopmental disorders and sensation impairments or insufficient verbal ability were excluded.

METHOD: The children were assessed with the Brief School-aged children Theory of mind Assessment (BSc-ToMA), and their caregivers completed the Communication and Socialization domain of the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scale (VABS). The BSc-ToMA has 2 domains (cognitive and affective) and 9 ToM developmental components (first-, second-, and third-order FB; real-apparent emotion; lie; white lie; irony; and faux pas). The cognitive domains of the BSc-ToMA include first-order FB (F-C), second-order FB (S-C), lie (L-C), and third-order FB (T-C). The affective domains of BSc-ToMA include first-order FB (F-A), second-order FB (S-A), real-apparent emotion (RA), lie (L-A), white lie (WL), irony (IR), faux pas (FP), and third-order FB (T-A). Descriptive statistics and Pearson’s correlation coefficient were used to describe and analyze the development of ToM and the correlation between the BSc-ToMA and VABS.

RESULTS: In total, 144 children were recruited (mean age = 108.8 months, SD = 20.9). Respectively, 63, 41 and 40 children were in the lower, middle and upper grades. The correct response rates of the BSc-ToMA developmental components were as follows: L-A (79%, simplest), WL (69%), F-A (61%), L-C (56%), F-C (44%), S-C (41%), FP (39%), RA (32%), T-A (24%), IR (23%), T-C (22%), S-A (12%, most difficult). In the three groups, the correct response rates of 9 items increased with age. In the lower grades, only the correct response rate of L-A was over 50%. In the middle grades, the correct response rates of F-C, S-C, L-C and FP were around 50%, and those of F-A, L-A and WL were over 70%. In the upper grades, the correct response rates were over 50 % and even 70%, except those of S-A, R-A, T-C and T-A. The BSc-ToMA had significantly positive correlations with the Communication and Socialization domain of the VABS (r = 0.58, p < 0.001, r = 0.31, p < 0.001).

CONCLUSION: The ToM is a developing social cognitive ability related to the everyday performance of social communication and interaction in school-aged children. Children rapidly develop the developmental components of first-order FB, lie and white lie from lower grades to middle grades, develop second-order FB, irony and faux pas in the middle and upper grades, and start to develop third-order FB in the upper grades. The correlational results showed that children with well-developed ToM have better social performance, especially in social communication. Understanding school-aged children’s development of ToM can help clinicians to infer their social performance. Moreover, clinicians may improve the ToM abilities of children with social performance difficulties in specific social contexts (e.g., lies or irony) in their appropriate age periods.

References

Nettle, D., & Liddle, B. (2006). Higher-order theory of mind and social competence in school-age children. Journal of Cultural and Evolutionary Psychology, 4(3), 231-244. DOI:10.1556/jcep.4.2006.3-4.3

Westby, C., & Robinson, L. (2014). A Developmental Perspective for Promoting Theory of Mind. Topics in Language Disorders, 34(4), 362-382. DOI:10.1097/tld.0000000000000035