Individual Differences in Advanced Theory of Mind: A Systematic Review of Measures and Social Consequences.

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

Abstract

Theory of mind (ToM) development is not confined to preschool age. Throughout middle childhood and beyond, children and adolescents develop an advanced ToM (AToM), which provides them with increasingly complex mentalizing skills (Hughes & Devine, 2015). Studies show links between individual differences in AToM and social competencies including our social preferences (Fink et al., 2015), our understanding of ourselves (Bosacki, 2015), and the way we handle criticism (Lecce et al., 2011). Despite these findings, the debate remains open on the strength and direction of links between AToM and social outcomes as the empirical evidence remains mixed. In particular, not all studies reveal substantial associations in the same direction (e.g., Bosacki et al., 2020; Koerber & Osterhaus, 2020).
What could account for these inconsistent findings? The present paper aims to explore this question by systematically reviewing the recent literature (published between 2010 and 2020), identifying the most popular measures of AToM (question 1) and whether children’s performance on these measures is related to social outcomes (question 2).
Our systematic review follows the guidelines laid out in the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA; Moher et al., 2009). Four databases (PsycArticles, PsycInfo, ERIC, and Academic Search Complete) were searched for articles published between 2010 and February 2020, using the following search terms: “theory of mind” and (“adolescen*” or “preadolescen*” or “life span” or “advanced”). This initial search resulted in 889 results. After removal of duplicates, 603 articles were checked for inclusion criteria (i.e., administration of AToM tasks; mean age of participants > 5 years; inclusion of at least a subsample of healthy, typically-developing children; articles written in English, German, or Spanish). Based on these criteria, 402 studies were excluded after a screening of the abstracts and full-texts, yielding a final sample of 201 studies.
Our results revealed extreme conceptual and methodological diversity in the type of instruments that are used to assess AToM, ranging from more cognitive, linguistic measures (such as the Strange Stories, where children infer mental states from short stories), to perceptual measures (such as the Eyes Test, where children infer mental states from pictures). These two measures were, at the same time, the two most popular ones: The Eyes Test (Baron‐Cohen et al., 2001) accounted for 20% of the the reported AToM measures, the Strange stories (Happé, 1994) for 19%. Tasks used to assess children’s understanding of second- or higher-order false belief and the faux-pas recognition test (Baron-Cohen et al., 1999) were also commonly used (13 and 10%, respectively), with all remaining measures used less frequently (< 5%).
Our meta-analysis of the association between individual differences in AToM and social outcomes suggests that children’s social preferences indicate mixed findings. That is, our findings so far provide evidence to suggest that AToM may not have a univocally positive effect on children’s social experiences. We finish with a discussion of how to best measure AToM in middle childhood and adolescence, and consider implications for transcultural and longitudinal studies across the lifespan.

Authors

• Christopher Osterhaus, University of Vechta
  Presenting Author

• Sandra Bosacki, Brock University
  Non-Presenting Author