The Older Child's Theory of Mind

Abstract

This chapter discusses the discussion of the older child's theory of mind. This research has dealt with important issues such as when young children are able to understand the representational nature of beliefs, that human behavior is caused by beliefs and desires, and even that mental phenomena are distinct from physical phenomena. The chapter focuses on the work that begun to do on later developments in children's theories of mind that addresses some questions, such as how does children's developing theory of mind relate to their acquisition of cognitive strategies, and to their intelligence as assessed by psychometric techniques. Research on later developments in children‘s theory of mind forms a link between the current work on young children's acquisition of the basic components of a theory of mind, and the earlier work on metacognition, which tended to focus on children's knowledge about variables that affect different types of mental activities, such as memory or attention.