Theory of Mind in Middle Childhood and Adolescence: Links with Teacher- and Peer-rated Social Competence.

• In Event: Theory of Mind in Middle Childhood and Adolescence: Measurement, Predictors, and Consequences.

Abstract

Social accounts of theory of mind (ToM) predict that individual differences in children’s ability to reason about others’ minds matter for children’s social lives (Apperly, 2012; Devine & Hughes, 2015). Supporting this view, individual differences in ToM in early childhood are positively associated with a range of indicators of children’s social competence including peer popularity (Slaughter, Imuta, Peterson and Henry, 2015), reciprocated friendship (Fink, Begeer, Peterson, and Slaughter, 2015), and prosocial behavior (Imuta, Henry, Slaughter, Selcuk, and Ruffman, 2016). We sought to extend existing work by examining the links between ToM and diverse indicators of social competence in school-aged children (i.e., peer popularity, peer social reputation, and teacher-rated social interaction skills). We aimed to refine existing accounts by examining the uniqueness (i.e., whether associations can be explained by common links with executive function or emotion recognition) and specificity (i.e., whether ToM matters for some but not all indicators of social competence) of the links between ToM and social competence.
An ethnically (51% White British) and socially diverse (24% in receipt of free school meals) sample of 1020 children (55% girls) aged between 8 and 13 years (Mage = 10.36, SDage = 1.27) from the United Kingdom participated in standardized whole-class testing sessions. Children completed age-appropriate measures of ToM including the Silent Film task (Devine & Hughes, 2013), Strange Stories (Happé, 1994), and Triangle Animations task (Castelli, Happé, Frith & Frith, 2000), alongside tests of emotion recognition (Dadds, Kimonis, Schollar-Root, Moul, & Hawes, 2018), verbal ability (Rust, 2008), and executive function (Obradovic, Sulik, Finch, & Strayer, 2018). Children rated their classmates’ peer reputation for sociability and leadership skills (Masten, Morison, & Pellegrini,1985) and selected their most-liked and least-liked peers (Cillessen & Marks, 2017). Teachers rated each child’s social interaction skills (Peterson, Slaughter, and Paynter, 2007).
Table 1 shows the correlations between study measures. Three key results emerged from the analyses using structural equation modelling. First, confirmatory factor analyses revealed that individual differences in the ability to explain others’ behavior with reference to mental states (‘theory of mind’) are distinct from but correlated with the ability to recognize basic emotions depicted in facial expressions (Table 1). Second, even when potential confounding variables were considered, individual differences in ToM uniquely and significantly predicted teacher-rated social interaction skills, B = .20, SE = .06, 95%CI [.09, .30], and peer-rated social reputation, B = .19, SE = .06, 95%CI [.08, .31], but not popularity, B = .10, SE = .07, 95%CI [-.05, .24] (Table 2). Third, moderator analyses indicated that associations between ToM and teacher-rated social interaction skills, B = -.08, SE = .05, p = .11, and between ToM and peer social reputation, B = -.02, SE = .03, p = .50, were equally strong across middle childhood and early adolescence. These results provide further support for social accounts of individual differences in ToM and extend existing work by highlighting the uniqueness and specificity of the relations between ToM and social competence in middle childhood and early adolescence.

Authors

• Rory T. Devine, University of Birmingham
  Presenting Author

• Imogen Grumley-Traynor, University of Birmingham
  Non-Presenting Author

• Irene Luque Aguilera, University of Birmingham
  Non-Presenting Author

• Tom Willetts, University of Birmingham
  Non-Presenting Author