Social interaction skills and theory of mind in young children.

Abstract

Two studies explored relations between peer social skills and theory of mind in young children. In Study 1, a global teacher rating of social skills with peers, performance on a traditional false-belief task, a standardized assessment of auditory language comprehension, and a time sampling of amount of speech with peers were obtained. Positive, but moderate, zero-order correlations were observed between the false-belief measure and social skills, and false belief accounted for a significant amount of additional variance in social skills after covarying age and the 2 measures of language. Study 2 replicated the findings of Study 1 by using a larger sample and a standardized teacher questionnaire. The results are discussed with regard to the critical role of a mentalistic theory of behavior for human social interactions.

Cites (5)

1. Weighted kappa: nominal scale agreement provision for scaled disagreement or partial credit
   Cohen, Jacob · 1968 · Psychological Bulletin
2. Beliefs about beliefs: Representation and constraining function of wrong beliefs in young children's understanding of deception
   Wimmer, H · 1983 · Cognition
3. The Perceived Competence Scale for Children
   Harter, Susan · 1982 · Child Development
4. Three-year-olds’ difficulty with false belief: The case for a conceptual deficit
   Perner, Josef, Leekam, Susan R., Wimmer, Heinz · 1987 · British Journal of Developmental Psychology
5. The Role of Age and Verbal Ability in the Theory of Mind Task Performance of Subjects with Autism
   Happe, Francesca G. E. · 1995 · Child Development

Show all 5 references

Cited by (21)

1. Peer Interactions, Relationships, and Groups
   Rubin, Kenneth H., Bukowski, William M., Parker, Jeffrey G. · 2007 · Handbook of Child Psychology
2. Language and Theory of Mind: Meta-Analysis of the Relation Between Language Ability and False-belief Understanding
   Milligan, Karen, Astington, Janet Wilde, Dack, Lisa Ain · 2007 · Child Development
3. The Neural Bases of Social Cognition and Story Comprehension
   Mar, Raymond A. · 2011 · Annual Review of Psychology
4. The impact of pretend play on children's development: A review of the evidence
   Lillard, Angeline S., Lerner, Matthew D., Hopkins, Emily J., Dore, Rebecca A., Smith, Eric D., Palmquist, Carolyn M. · 2013 · Psychological Bulletin
5. Executive function and the promotion of social–emotional competence
   Riggs, Nathaniel R., Jahromi, Laudan B., Razza, Rachel P., Dillworth-Bart, Janean E., Mueller, Ulrich · 2006 · Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology

See all 313