The relationship between metacognitive vocabulary and theory of mind development

Abstract

The aim of the present study was to investigate the relation between false belief understanding and the linguistic capacities of (i) mental verb comprehension, and (ii) complement sentence production and comprehension. The sample included 70 preschool children within the 3;0-6;6 age range with 10 children in each six-month period. The materials used to assess theory of mind development were Wimmer and Perner's (1983) first order false belief tests "the unexpected contents task" and "the unexpected location task". For the assessment of mental verb knowledge Astington and Pelletier's (2001) task was adapted, while knowledge of complement constructions was assessed by using picture-stories. It was hypothesized that the linguistic capacities of comprehension and production of complement sentences, and understanding of mental verbs would have been established before false belief understanding. The findings revealed that children start to establish some understanding about other minds starting around three years of age. Children's performance revealed highest level of understanding for the verb sanmak "think with implication of false belief" as compared to other mental verbs, but understanding of mental verbs did not precede false belief understanding. Memory for false beliefs expressed in complement clauses with the verb sanmak "think with implication of false belief" and age were found to be predicting factors for false belief understanding.