Cambridge Journals Online

Referential communication abilities and Theory of Mind development in preschool children ¹

Abstract

This work aims to analyse the specific contribution of social abilities (here considered as the capacity for attributing knowledge to others) in a particular communicative context. 74 normally developing children (aged 3;4 to 5;9, M=4·6) were given two Theory of Mind (ToM) tasks, which are considered to assess increasing complexity levels of epistemic state attribution: Attribution of knowledge-ignorance (Pillow, 1989; adapted by Welch-Ross, 1997) and Understanding of False-belief (Baron Cohen, Leslie & Frith, 1985). Subjects were paired according to their age and level of performance in ToM tasks. These dyads participated in a referential communication task specially designed for this research. The resulting communicative interchanges were analysed using a three-level category system (pragmatic functions, descriptive accuracy, and ambiguity of messages). The results showed significant differences among subjects with different levels of social comprehension regarding the type of communicative resources used by them in every category level. In particular, understanding of false belief seems to be the most powerful predictor of changes in the children’s development of communicative competence.

Footnotes

¹ This research is part of the requirement for a doctoral dissertation at the University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain. The authors wish to thank the children and staff of the schools C.E.I.P. ‘López Ferreiro’ and ‘Pio XII’, Santiago de Compostela, for their participation and collaboration, the JCL editor and two anonymous reviewers for their comments and helpful suggestions on an earlier version of this paper, and Debbie Randall for her invaluable help in producing an adequate text.