Language can obscure as well as facilitate apparent-Theory of mind performance: part 1 - An exploratory study with 4 year-Olds using the element of surprise

Abstract

Language is integral to children’s Theory of Mind (ToM) development. Here, we also considered whether language emerges as important because tasks assess ToM through language. Fifty-five typically-developing 4-year-olds completed eight false-belief tasks via film clips, responding verbally or by pointing, plus explaining each response. Each clip was then played out to its conclusion and children’s surprise to expected versus unexpected searches and outcomes was measured. Total performance using surprise was 71% higher than the standard index and 3-times as high as verbally explained ToM. Contrasts between four intersections of likely/unlikely searches with plausible/implausible object-retrievals, revealed children were most surprised when both search and retrieval were unlikely-implausible. Contrastingly, surprise for unlikely-search/plausible-retrieval, was the only sub-task predicting variation in verbally explained ToM. For total scores, gender but not surprise, predicted verbally explained ToM. Indexes using surprise suggest 4-year-olds have high ToM compared to indexes heavily reliant on language. Previous findings that girls’ ToM is higher than in boys, may also stem from a reliance on language. Also, children’s ToM is more evident in pretend-contexts than in real-life-contexts. We interpret our findings as evidence that testing of ToM using low-language tasks alongside language-laden tasks may permit a more complete picture of ToM development.

Keywords

• children
• false-belief
• implicit-explicit continuum
• language
• surprise
• theory of mind