Poster #193 - Development of affective and cognitive ToM from 2 to 6 years of age

• In Event: 2-055 - Poster Session 06
  In Poster Session: PS 06 Section - Social Cognition

Integrative Statement

Theory of mind (ToM) is the ability to attribute mental states such as intentions, emotions, or knowledge to someone else (Premack & Woodruff, 1978). This ability can be divided in two principal components: cognitive and affective ToM. Cognitive ToM is defined as the ability to attribute beliefs and intentions while affective ToM is the ability to attribute emotional and affective state to others (Astington, Harris, & Olson, 1988). Four-year-old children can already attribute cognitive mental states to others when tested with false belief tasks (Flavell, 2000). However, little is known of the development during childhood of affective ToM. The present study, thus, aimed to investigate the development of affective and cognitive ToM from 2 to 6 years of age. In addition, given that succeeding false belief tasks are associated with the development of inhibitory control (IC) in particular (Carlson & Moses, 2001), we investigated whether IC abilities could be related to the emergence of cognitive and affective ToM.
We asked 112 children (M = 59.7 ± 13.5 months of age, 60 girls, 52 boys) aged 2 to 6 years of age to perform a 1st order and 2nd order cognitive and affective ToM tasks adapted from the Yoni tasks (Shamay-Tsoory & Aharon-Peretz, 2007, see figure 1), and two IC tasks, i.e., the Day-Night and the Happy-Sad tasks (Lagattuta, Sayfan, & Mansour, 2011, see figure 2). Age group (1, M= 42 months of age vs 2, M = 53.6 months of age) vs 3 (M = 64.6 months of age) vs 4 (M = 77.6 months of age)) x ToM order (1st vs 2nd order) x ToM type (Cognitive vs. affective) mixed design Analyses of Variance on the proportion of correct answers revealed a main effect of age, F(3,109) = 21.57, p < .001, η² = .36, and a significant two-way interaction between Age group and ToM order, F(3,109) = 2.72, p < .05, η² = .07. Separate ANOVAs for 1st and 2nd order ToM tasks revealed a two–way interaction between ToM type and Age group, F(3,109) = 4.98, p < .01, η² = .12). Corrected Post-hoc comparisons with a Holm-Bonferroni method revealed that the proportion of correct answers was higher in the affective than the cognitive ToM task in three of the four age groups (see figure 3) for 1st order ToM, and in all age groups for 2nd order ToM (see figure 4). Finally, partial correlations controlled for age showed that performance in the Happy-Sad task was correlated with performance in the 1st order cognitive, r(109) = .179, p < .05, and affective, r(109) = .203, p < .05, ToM tasks and to 2nd order affective ToM task, r(109) = .301, p < .001.
Taken together, these results suggest that affective ToM might develop before cognitive ToM from 2 to 6 years of age in both 1st and 2nd order ToM and that the development of affective and cognitive ToM could be related to the development of IC abilities.

Authors

• Manali Draperi, Paris Descartes University
  Presenting Author

• Ania Aïte, Paris Descartes University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Olivier Houdé, University Paris Descartes
  Non-Presenting Author

• Grégoire Borst, Paris Descartes University
  Non-Presenting Author