Persuasion skills in children and chilldren from 6 to 12 years old. The role of the theory of mind and linguistic competition

Abstract

The objectives of this study are: a) to analyze the persuasive ability (selfish and prosocial) of the children of Primary Education and b) its relation with the linguistic competence and the understanding of the mind. Method: 103 children from 6 to 12 years old were administered the PPVT-III test, a battery of ToM tasks and two tasks of persuasive production (one selfish and one prosocial). Results. In prosocial persuasion children produce more different arguments and positive valence; instead, with regard to quality, the production of mentalist arguments in both types of persuasion is similar. In addition, children with greater linguistic and mentalist competence (especially attribution of emotional rather than epistemic states) produce more varied and higher quality persuasive arguments (valence is only related to mentalist competence); specifically, the attribution of emotions linked to beliefs is related to the variety of arguments of selfish persuasion, and the attribution of emotion to the victim of a faux pas with the variety and valence in prosocial persuasion. These data can be useful to guide the promotion of prosocial peer influence at school age.

Keywords

• persuasión
• lenguaje
• teoría de la mente
• educación primaria