Abstract
The purpose of this study was to explore theory of mind (ToM) differences in children with different birth orders (only-children, first-born children, and second-born children), and further explore the effect of cognitive verb training for only-children’s ToM. Adopting the paradigm of false belief, Study 1 was conducted in which a sample of 120 children aged 3–6, including first-born children, second-born children (siblings aged 1–13 years), and only-children were tested. The results showed that (1) children aged 3–6 had significantly higher scores on first-order false-belief than second-order false-belief. (2) Controlling for age, the only-children scored significantly lower than the first-born children. In Study 2, 28 only-children aged 4–5 (13 in the experimental group and 15 in the control group) who initially failed in false-belief tasks were trained with the cognitive verb animations. Significant post-training improvements were observed for only-children who received training of animations embedded with cognitive verb. Those findings indicated that ToM of only-children was significantly worse than first-born children of two-child families, and linguistic training could facilitate ToM of only-children whose ToM were at a disadvantage.
Highlights
China’s one-child policy was set in place in 1979 and was in force until about 2013
We examined whether having a sibling was helpful for 3–6 years old children to develop theory of mind (ToM), and explored whether the development of children’s ToM could be improved through intervention training
The results showed that cognitive verb training improved the ToM ability of only-children who had failed in false-belief tasks
Summary
China’s one-child policy was set in place in 1979 and was in force until about 2013. Since the country’s family planning guidelines have evolved, and the number of non-only-children families has gradually increased. According to statistics from the National Bureau of Statistics of China (NBS), there was a 1.62 million increase in second-born children in 2017 compared with 2016, and the second-born child birth rate accounted for 62.17% of the country’s total birth rate in 2019 (Li, 2019; Zhang, 2020). Older siblings are more likely to take on the role of tutors, caregivers, and playmates, and their prosocial behaviors such as sharing, empathy (Li et al, 2019b), and cooperation (Hughes et al, 2018) are developed in the process of sibling interaction. Being a younger sibling with older siblings shows advantages in developing communication and interaction with others
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