“I think I can!” Comparing theory of mind content in Japanese and US storybooks

• In Event: Poster Session 06
  In Poster Session: PS 06 Topic - Social Cognition

Abstract

Children’s story books contain a wealth of mental state inferences and serve as an important resource in fostering early theory of mind skills. Nonetheless, the amount and nature of theory of mind content presented in story books may vary across cultures. Our study aims to compare theory of mind content in story books that are widely accessed by preschool-aged children in Japan and the United States (US). Previous studies suggest that Japanese children achieve false belief understanding later than children in Western countries such as the US. As such, we are interested in investigating whether Japanese and US story books differ in elements that are likely to foster false belief understanding, particularly (1) mental state expressions (e.g. cognition-, emotion-, and desires-related terms), (2) complement clauses (i.e. embedded sentences such as in "John thought it was raining"), and (3) false belief elements within the plot. In accordance with Dyer-Seymour et al. (2004), we predict that the overall frequency of mental state expressions would be similar between Japanese and US story books. However, we consider that plot elements and complement structures that foster false belief understanding may occur less in Japanese than US story books, based on previous studies suggesting Japanese children’s later achievements in false belief understanding (e.g. Naito & Koyama, 2006) and a previous study suggesting that complement structures occur less in Japanese mother-child dyad conversations (Suzuki & Nomura, 2020). We are currently coding 40 Japanese and 40 US story books. To assess reliability, 10 randomly selected books from each culture have been independently coded by the first author and additional authors. The remaining 60 books have initially been coded by the first author, and additional authors are currently reviewing the coding for accuracy. All discrepancies will be discussed and resolved. If our obtained data does not meet parametric assumptions as in Farkas et al. (2020), we will conduct Mann-Whitney U-tests to compare the frequency of mental state expressions and complement clauses between Japanese and US story books. If a preliminary analysis (i.e. Mann-Whitney U test) suggests that Japanese and US story books differ in number of sentences, we will be conducting the aforementioned analyses with mental state expressions and complement clauses as a proportion of total number of sentences, to control for heterogeneity in lengths of books. We will conduct chi-squared analyses to investigate whether Japanese and US story books differ in the number of story books that (1) has a plot that revolves around false belief occurrences and (2) that has at least one false belief occurrence. Data collection and analyses will be completed prior to the conference. Our study will expand the limited literature on how children’s story books may contribute to early theory of mind skills, and how the nature of this contribution may potentially differ across cultures.

Authors

• Mioko Sudo, University of Florida
  Presenting Author

• Jaxenne Daniels, University of Florida
  Non-Presenting Author

• Yasuko Okada
  Non-Presenting Author

• Tomoko Matsui, Tokyo Gakugei University
  Non-Presenting Author

• M. Jeffrey Farrar, University of Florida
  Non-Presenting Author