Longitudinal links between advanced theory-of-mind and earlier false-belief, verbal and non-verbal abilities and social competence

• In Event: 2-136 - Social cognition beyond preschool: Advances and issues in measuring advanced theory of mind

Integrative Statement

Overview: The theory of mind (ToM) literature has been dominated by a single measure, false-belief understanding (FB). However, it is yet unclear how earlier FB is associated with measures of more advanced ToM in older children, and whether the longitudinal association between measures is reliant on more domain-general skills. Furthermore, much empirical work has been conducted on the association between ToM and social competence (e.g., Slaughter et al. 2015, Imuta et al., 2016) however these studies tend to rely on concurrent designs with young children. The current longitudinal study examines the extent of continuity between children’s FB at 5 years of age and advanced ToM at 7 years of age, measured by Faux Pas, second-order false-belief and belief-based emotion understanding. Specifically, the current study explores: (1) if there is longitudinal stability across different measures of theory of mind, (2) if this stability remains when controlling for children’s verbal and non-verbal abilities, and (3) if ToM understanding at 5 years and 7 years have the same relevance for children’s social competencies.
Method: Participants comprised 142 children (Mage = 62.6 months, SD = 3.4 months, 45% girls) recruited during their first year of formal schooling and assessed again 2 years later (Mage = 80 months, SD = 3.8 months). All participants completed standard unexpected contents (2 items) and unexpected transfer (2 items) FB tasks at Time 1, and 3 second-order false-belief, 3 Faux Pas and 2 belief-based emotion items at Time 2, as well as measures of both expressive and receptive language and non-verbal abilities (Raven’s Progressive Matrices) at both time points. Teachers completed a short questionnaire assessing children’s social competence (PSMAT; Fink et al., 2015) at the end of both school years.
Results: Findings showed moderate longitudinal stability between earlier FB and all three measures of advanced ToM (rs > .25, ps < 0.014). As expected verbal ability at T1 and T2 was associated with concurrent FB and later advanced ToM to the extent that the longitudinal stability between FB and advanced ToM fell away when controlling for language ability (rs < .14, ps > 0.14, with the exception of belief-based emotion understanding, r = .20, p = 0.017). Contrastingly, non-verbal intelligence was only associated with FB at T1 and did not influence the extent to which ToM constructs were stable over time. Finally, children’s early social competence during the first year of school was strongly related to both concurrent FB and later advanced ToM, whereas social competence at T2 showed a specific association to children’s Faux Pas understanding only (r = .26, p = .008).
Conclusion: While there is degree of longitudinal stability in the measurement of ToM between 5 and 7 years of age, this appears to rest on children’s general verbal ability. The association between advanced ToM to children’s social competencies both concurrently and longitudinally suggests that meaning and relevance of different advanced ToM measures for social competence is varied. Implications for the measurement of ToM at different ages will be discussed.

Author

• Elian Fink, University of Cambridge
  Presenting Author