Poster #188 - Content-Based Language Predicts Theory of Mind in Middle Childhood

• In Event: 3-053 - Poster Session 10
  In Poster Session: PS 10 Section - Social Cognition

Integrative Statement

Background: Theory of mind (ToM) is the understanding that people have mental states (e.g., beliefs, desires, knowledge, intent), possibly different from one’s own, that influence behavior. Although the majority of research on ToM has focused on its development during the preschool years, there is evidence that higher-order ToM abilities are refined during middle childhood as language and literacy skills develop (Grazzani & Ornaghi, 2012; Hayward, Homer, & Sprung, 2016). Researchers have debated the role of specific language abilities in ToM development. Astington and Jenkins (1999) and deVilliers (2005) argued that acquisition of sentential complements and other complex syntactic constructions allows children to represent the beliefs of others, thereby supporting ToM development. Nelson (2005) emphasized that children’s grasp of meaning fosters their participation in the conversational interactions that serve as critical contexts for developing mental representations of other people’s perspectives and beliefs. In contrast, a meta-analysis of 104 studies of ToM in children under 7 years found general language assessments to be more strongly related to ToM than assessments of specific language abilities (Milligan et al., 2007). Going beyond the early years, Dore and colleagues (2018) suggested that reading comprehension may be a key factor underlying children’s ability to infer the mental states of others. The current study extends this line of inquiry by examining performance of school-age children on a nonverbal assessment of ToM in relation to their language and literacy skills.

Methods: Sixty-two children (30 boys, 32 girls; M= 8 years; 2 months, 6;0−10;8) completed the Attribution of Intentions Task (adapted from Brunet et al., 2003), a nonverbal ToM task requiring children to infer a comic strip character’s future actions from a series of depicted events. Children also completed standardized assessments of receptive vocabulary (PPVT–4; Dunn & Dunn, 2007), receptive grammar (TROG–2; Bishop, 2003), and basic reading/decoding and reading comprehension (WRMT–III; Woodcock, 2011), in addition to assessments of nonverbal intelligence (TONI–3; Brown, Sherbenou, & Johnsen, 2010), phonological short-term memory (Nonword Repetition Task; Gathercole et al., 1994), and visual-spatial working memory (1-Shape Array Memory Task; Cowan et al., 2010); see Table 1.

Results and Conclusions: To predict ToM performance, we used four stepwise regression analyses, with age (months), nonverbal intelligence (raw scores), phonological short-term memory (accuracy), and visual-spatial working memory (accuracy) entered at Step 1 and each of the four language/literacy measures entered at Step 2; see Table 2. Receptive vocabulary and reading comprehension predicted significant gains in ToM abilities over and above the effects of age, nonverbal intelligence, and memory. Neither grammar nor basic reading abilities were significant predictors at Step 2. These results suggest that content-based linguistic knowledge (vocabulary, reading comprehension) is more strongly linked to ToM than procedural language skills (grammar, basic reading/decoding). That is, ToM development in middle childhood appears to be supported by growth in lexical knowledge (vocabulary) and the ability to process text, understand its meaning, and draw inferences to integrate new information with what is already known.

Authors

• Danielle DeNigris, Fairleigh Dickinson University
  Presenting Author

• Rita Obeid, Case Western Reserve University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Patricia J. Brooks, College of Staten Island and The Graduate Center CUNY
  Non-Presenting Author