Children's Understanding Of Mind Research Articles

Theory of Mind Among Swedish Children with ASD, Down Syndrome and Typically Developing Group.

The present study examined the role of IQ and the Theory of Mind understanding in children with an autism spectrum disorder and down syndrome. Sixty-six Swedish children with ASD (n = 26), DS (n = 18), and typically developed group (n = 22) ranged between 6 and 12years old were compared on ToM tasks consisted of standard ToM and IQ tasks. SPSS 25 program was used to analyze data. The results indicated that individuals with ASD reach a better understanding of first-order ToM tasks than children with DS. This picture was the same in the TD group to show better ability than children with ASD and DS on first-order tasks, except one task which was not found significant differences. To employ second-order TD performed better than clinical groups, while, there was no significant difference between ASD and DS. The scores for the third-order task in children with ASD were significantly better than children with DS.

Sarcasm and advanced theory of mind understanding in children and adults with prelingual deafness.

Two studies addressed key theoretical debates in theory of mind (ToM) development by comparing (a) deaf native signers (n = 18), (b) deaf late signers (n = 59), and (c) age-matched hearing persons (n = 74) in childhood (Study 1: n = 81) and adulthood (Study 2: n = 70) on tests of first- and second-order false belief and conversational sarcasm. Results showed ToM development to be a life span phenomenon for deaf and hearing people alike. Native and late signers were outperformed by hearing peers on advanced ToM in childhood (M = 9 years), but in adulthood (M = 40 years), native signers had caught up, whereas late signers had not. Findings highlight the extended importance of conversational interaction for ToM growth.

Ambiguous figure perception and theory of mind understanding in children with autistic spectrum disorders

Researchers in early social‐cognition have found that the ability to reverse an ambiguous figure is correlated with success on theory of mind tasks (e.g. Gopnik & Rosati, 2001). The present experiment examined children with autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) without mental delay to see whether a similar relationship existed. Ropar, Mitchell, and Ackroyd (2003)demonstrated that children with ASD with mental delay were impaired on theory of mind tasks, but were as likely as mentally delayed controls to generate both interpretations of an ambiguous figure when informed of its ambiguity. The present study replicated this finding on children with ASD without mental delay. However, overall perception of ambiguous figures was different. These children were less likely to spontaneously generate both interpretations of the figure, and more likely to perseverate on a single interpretation than the comparison children. Like Ropar et al., we found no correlation between theory of mind and informed reversals, but spontaneous reversals were correlated with performance on an advanced theory of mind task. These data suggest that reversals of ambiguous figures are linked to higher‐level representational abilities, which might also be involved in social functioning, and impaired in children with ASD.

An investigation of first‐order false belief understanding of children with congenital profound visual impairment

This study assessed theory of mind understanding in children with congenital profound visual impairment (CPVI): children who have had no access to visual information throughout development. Participants were 18 children with CPVI and no other impairments, aged between 5 and 11 years, and 18 children with normal vision, matched individually on chronological age, verbal IQ and verbal mental age. Three first‐order false belief tasks were presented twice each; the three tasks varied in the extent of deception and involvement of the child. Six of the children with CPVI failed one or more of the false belief tasks; all sighted children passed all of the tasks. The manipulations of deception and involvement did not influence the performance of the children with CPVI. Participant characteristics of the children with CPVI were examined in relation to their performance on the false belief tasks: chronological age and type of school attended were not found to be related to performance; verbal IQ and verbal mental age were found to differ in children with good and poor performance on the false belief tasks. The results are consistent with either a general pattern of delay in theory of mind development for children with CPVI, or with a subset of children who have longer‐term difficulties in this area.

Mother-child participation in conversation about the past: relationships to preschoolers' theory of mind.

Forty 3.5 to 4.5-year-olds discussed 3 past events with their mothers and completed a set of theory of mind tasks indexing their ability to reason about conflicting mental representations and their understanding of knowledge. Semipartial correlations and analyses of covariance showed that children's theory of mind scores were related to their participation in memory conversations, independent of age and linguistic skill. The frequency with which mothers provided new information was related to children's theory of mind scores, although mothers' direct replies to children were generally unrelated to children's understanding of mind. This research takes an important step toward examining the relevance of theory of mind skills to real-world, social interaction. The results have implications for explaining the emergence of autobiographical memory.