Context and Theory of Mind
The contexts in which children are embedded contribute to their developing understanding of the mind. Children in many countries, including Canada, India, Thailand, Norway, China, and the United States, show the onset and development of theory of mind between the ages of 3 and 5 (Callaghan et al., 2005; Wellman, Fang, & Peterson, 2011). However, social and contextual factors may influence the specific pattern of theory of mind development. North American and Chinese children develop theory of mind in early childhood, but along different paths (Wellman, 2017). Chinese culture emphasizes collectivism, commonality, and interdependence among community members. Chinese parents’ comments to children tend to refer to knowing and shared knowledge that community members must learn. U.S. parents emphasize Western values such as individuality and independence. They comment more on thinking, including differences in thoughts among individuals. U.S. children, and other children from individualist cultures, develop an understanding of beliefs before knowledge. Chinese children tend to show the reverse pattern: an early understanding of the knowledge aspect of theory of mind and later come to understand beliefs (Wellman, 2017). Children from Iran and Turkey follow a similar pattern in theory of mind development (Shahaeian, Peterson, Slaughter, & Wellman, 2011).
Everyday conversations aid children in developing a theory of mind because such conversations tend to center on and provide examples of mental states and their relation with behavior. When parents and other adults speak with children about mental states, emotions, and behaviors, as well as discuss causes and consequences, children develop a more sophisticated understanding of other people’s perspectives (Devine & Hughes, 2018; Pavarini, Hollanda Souza, & Hawk, 2012). In addition, siblings provide young children with opportunities for social interaction, pretend play, and practice with deception. Children with siblings perform better on false-belief tests than do only children (McAlister & Peterson, 2013). Success in false-belief attribution tasks is most frequent in children who are the most active in shared pretend play (Schwebel, Rosen, & Singer, 1999).
Children’s interactions with people in their immediate contexts can also influence the development of theory of mind. Children can be trained in perspective taking. For example, when children are presented with a series of objects that look like a certain thing but are actually something else (candle and apple) and are shown the appearance and real states of the objects, along with explanation, 3-year-olds showed improvements on false-belief tasks (Lohmann & Tomasello, 2003). Discussion emphasizing the existence of a variety of possible perspectives in relation to an object can improve performance in false-belief tasks—dialogue can facilitate the development of theory of mind (Bernard & Deleau, 2007). Other studies have engaged North American and European children in discussion about the thoughts, beliefs, and desires of characters in stories, especially stories in which characters play tricks to surprise or deceive one another. Children who receive the training improved their performance in subsequent false-belief tasks (Liu, Wellman, Tardif, & Sabbagh, 2008; Milligan, Astington, & Dack, 2007; Slaughter & Perez-Zapata, 2014). Similarly, conversation about deceptive objects (e.g., a pen that looked like a flower) also improves performance on false-belief tasks (Lohmann & Tomasello, 2003).
Metacognition
Theory of mind is a precursor to the development of metacognition (Lecce, Demicheli, Zocchi, & Palladino, 2015). Young children know that the mind is where thinking takes place. Between 3 and 5, children come to understand that they can know something that others do not (essential for success on false-belief tasks), that their thoughts cannot be observed, and that there are individual differences in mental states (Pillow, 2008). They begin to understand that someone can think of one thing while doing something else, that a person whose eyes and ears are covered can think, and that thinking is different from talking, touching, and knowing (Flavell et al., 1995). However, young children’s understanding of the mind is far from complete. Three- and four-year-old children do not understand that we think even when we are inactive. They look for visible indicators of thinking—perhaps one reason why teachers of young children refer to “putting on your thinking cap”—and assume their absence indicates the absence of thought. It is not until middle childhood that children understand that the mind is always active (Flavell, 1999). Likewise, preschoolers tend to think of the mind as simply a container for items, but older children tend to see the mind as an active constructor of knowledge that receives, processes, and transforms information (Chandler & Carpendale, 1998).
Young children show limited knowledge of memory functions, contributing to their poor performance on memory tasks. Four-year-olds recognize that increasing the number of items on a list makes recall more difficult and that longer retention intervals increase the likelihood of forgetting (Pillow, 2008). But they know little about the effectiveness of deliberate memory strategies. For example, whereas 6- and 7-year-olds demonstrated an understanding of the role of deliberate practice in memory and practiced without being prompted, 5-year-olds showed an understanding of deliberate practice and some capacity to practice, but 4-year-olds showed neither of these capabilities (Brinums, Imuta, & Suddendorf, 2018). The advances that take place in information processing during early childhood are summarized in Table 7.3.
Table 7.3
Thinking in Context 7.3
1 What are the practical implications of young children’s capacities for attention and memory?
2 In what ways might brain development account for cognitive changes that we see in early childhood such as increases in information processing capacity and changes in reasoning?
3 Recall from Chapter 1 that development is influenced by multiple contexts. How might contextual influences—family, neighborhood, sociocultural context, and even cohort or generation—influence aspects of cognitive development, such as autobiographical memory or theory of mind?
Language Development in Early Childhood
Toddlers transitioning from infancy to early childhood tend to use telegraphic speech. They learn to use multiple elements of speech, such as plurals, adjectives, and the past tense. Children’s vocabulary and grammar become dramatically more complex during early childhood, enabling them to communicate, but also think, in new ways.
Vocabulary
At 2 years of age, the average child knows about 500 words; vocabulary acquisition continues at a rapid pace. The average 3-year-old child has a vocabulary of 900 to 1,000 words. By 6 years of age, most children have a vocabulary of about 14,000 words, which means that the average child learns a new word every 1 to 2 hours, every day (Owens, 2015). How is language learned so quickly? Children continue to use fast mapping (see Chapter 5) as a strategy to enable them to learn the meaning of a new word after hearing it once or twice based on contextual association and understanding (Kucker, McMurray, & Samuelson, 2015). Fast mapping improves with age.
Children learn words that they hear often, that label things and events that interest them, and that they encounter in contexts that are meaningful to them (Harris et al., 2011). Preschoolers can learn words from watching videos with both human and robot speakers, but they learn more quickly in response to human speakers (Moriguchi, Kanda, Ishiguro, Shimada, & Itakura, 2011), especially when the speaker responds to them, such as through videoconferencing (e.g., Skype) (Roseberry et al., 2014). Children learn best in interactive contexts with parents, teachers, siblings, and peers that entail turn-taking, joint attention, and scaffolding
