A Lag between Understanding False Belief and Emotion Attribution in Young Children: Relationships with Linguistic Ability and Mothers' Mental-State Language

Autor/inn/en	de Rosnay, Marc; Pons, Francisco; Harris, Paul L.; Morrell, Julian M. B.
Titel	A Lag between Understanding False Belief and Emotion Attribution in Young Children: Relationships with Linguistic Ability and Mothers' Mental-State Language
Quelle	In: British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 22 (2004) 2, S.197-218 (22 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0261-510X
DOI	10.1348/026151004323044573
Schlagwörter	Theory of Mind; Video Technology; Mothers; Semantics; Young Children; Verbal Ability; Linguistic Input; Language Skills; Parent Child Relationship; Beliefs; Attribution Theory; Emotional Response; Cognitive Ability; Task Analysis; Correlation; Measures (Individuals) + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Mother; Mutter; Semantik; Frühe Kindheit; Mündliche Leistung; Sprachbildung; Language skill; Sprachkompetenz; Parents-child relationship; Parent-child-relation; Parent-child relationship; Eltern-Kind-Beziehung; Belief; Glaube; Emotionales Verhalten; Denkfähigkeit; Aufgabenanalyse; Korrelation; Messdaten
Abstract	This study examines the contribution of children's linguistic ability and mothers' use of mental-state language to young children's understanding of false belief and their subsequent ability to make belief-based emotion attributions. In Experiment 1, children (N = 51) were given three belief-based emotion-attribution tasks. A standard task in which the protagonist was a story character and the emotional outcomes were imagined, and two videos in which the story protagonist was a real infant and the emotional outcomes were observable (high and low expressed emotion conditions). Children's verbal ability (semantic competence) was also measured. In Experiment 2, children (N = 75) were given two belief-based emotion tasks: the standard story task and the high expressed emotion video. In addition, children's verbal ability (syntactic competence) and mothers' use of mental-state attributes when describing their children were also measured. The results showed that: (1) the lag between understanding false belief and emotion attribution was a stable feature of children's reasoning across the three tests; and (2) children who were more linguistically advanced and whose mothers' described them in more mentalistic terms were more likely to understand the association between false belief and emotion. The findings underline the continuing importance of verbal ability and linguistic input for children's developing theory-of-mind understanding, even after they display an understanding of false belief. (As Provided).
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Update	2017/4/10