Examination of the relationship between false-belief understanding and referential communication skills

Abstract

The present study is an attempt to examine the relation between false-belief understanding and referential communication skills. The ability of 76 children aged 5 years to attribute false beliefs to themselves and others was examined with three false-belief tasks. The referential communication skills of the same children were assessed with two tests: (a) the Listening Skills Test (Lloyd et al. 2001) and (b) the Test of Referential Communication (Lloyd et al. 1995), which were adjusted to Greek reality for this purpose. The results showed that there is a link between false-belief understanding and components of referential communication, namely, ability to identify a pictorial referent based on oral messages, ability to comprehend directions on a map, and ability to detect and resolve ambiguity in oral messages. They also revealed that comprehension of directions and ability to detect ambiguity in messages as listener may be good predictors of false-belief competence. The present findings support and expand previous evidence attesting to a link between false-belief understanding and other aspects of language such as syntax, semantics, and pragmatics.