Abstract
AbstractThe recent expansion of research on children's understanding of others' minds (or ‘theory of mind’, ToM) into middle childhood provides fresh opportunities to consider its origins and consequences. In this paper, we propose that, in addition to supporting children's social interactions, individual differences in ToM benefit academic achievement, in particular, reading comprehension and scientific reasoning. Furthermore, we argue that the school and classroom context can influence individual differences in ToM and its ongoing development in middle childhood. We suggest future directions for research to test these claims, which will provide a new perspective on the consequences of ToM and test the developmental continuity of socio‐cultural accounts of mindreading.
Highlights
LECCE AND DEVINE existence of marked individual differences in theory of mind (ToM) that reflect genuine variation in the ease and fluency with which children engage in reasoning about others' minds (Bianco, Lecce, & Banerjee, 2016; Hughes & Devine, 2015)
We argue that the school and classroom context can influence individual differences in ToM and its ongoing development in middle childhood
We argue that the school context can influence individual differences in ToM and its ongoing development in middle childhood
Summary
LECCE AND DEVINE existence of marked individual differences in ToM that reflect genuine variation in the ease and fluency with which children engage in reasoning about others' minds (Bianco, Lecce, & Banerjee, 2016; Hughes & Devine, 2015). We propose that, in addition to supporting children's social interactions, individual differences in ToM benefit academic achievement, in particular, reading comprehension and scientific reasoning. We argue that the school and classroom context can influence individual differences in ToM and its ongoing development in middle childhood.
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