The theoretical background of this study deals with the role of language in developing theory of mind (Astington, Baird, 2005). The study investigates whether training preschool children in the use of mental state lexicon plays a causal role in bringing about advanced conceptual understanding of mental terms and improved performance on theory-of-mind tasks. A total of 70 participants recluted in Milan and hinterland were divided into two age groups (3 year olds and 4 year olds) and randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. All participants were pre- and post-tested with linguistic and cognitive measures. Analyses of pre-test data did not show any significant differences between experimental and control groups. During a two-month period of intervention, children were read stories enriched with mental lexicon. After listening to the story, the experimental group took part in language games and conversations aimed at stimulating them to use mental terms. In contrast, the control group did not participate in any special linguistic activities. The experimental group outperformed the control group on language comprehension, comprehension of metacognitive verbs, comprehension of emotion, and, especially in the 4 year old group, on false belief understanding. No significant age and gender differences emerged. These findings support the hypothesis that language is an important factor in children's development of theory of mind.
Grazzani, I., Ornaghi, V. (2010). Improving preschool children's theory of mind: A training study with language games. In Proceedings of ESPP 2010 (pp.204-204).
Improving preschool children's theory of mind: A training study with language games
GRAZZANI, ILARIA;ORNAGHI, VERONICA MARIA
2010
Abstract
The theoretical background of this study deals with the role of language in developing theory of mind (Astington, Baird, 2005). The study investigates whether training preschool children in the use of mental state lexicon plays a causal role in bringing about advanced conceptual understanding of mental terms and improved performance on theory-of-mind tasks. A total of 70 participants recluted in Milan and hinterland were divided into two age groups (3 year olds and 4 year olds) and randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. All participants were pre- and post-tested with linguistic and cognitive measures. Analyses of pre-test data did not show any significant differences between experimental and control groups. During a two-month period of intervention, children were read stories enriched with mental lexicon. After listening to the story, the experimental group took part in language games and conversations aimed at stimulating them to use mental terms. In contrast, the control group did not participate in any special linguistic activities. The experimental group outperformed the control group on language comprehension, comprehension of metacognitive verbs, comprehension of emotion, and, especially in the 4 year old group, on false belief understanding. No significant age and gender differences emerged. These findings support the hypothesis that language is an important factor in children's development of theory of mind.
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