A Research On The Relationship Between 3-6 Years Old Children's Theory Of Mind And Cooperation

Theory of mind(TOM) is an important cognitive ability to predict and explain the behavior and feelings of others based on reference to mental states like beliefs,desires and percepts.Since the eighties of the 20^th century,TOM has become an area of much concern among developmental psychologists.Much of the empirical work in the area of TOM has concentrated on the ascertainment of age differences in performance and the effects of task modifications on performance during the preschool years.However,attention is now turning to the individual differences and examination of potential correlates in the domain of social behaviour.The relationship between TOM and cooperation should receive a particular attention because cooperation plays an important role in children's development.This present research attempts to examine the relationship between TOM and cooperation.It will help us to understand the inner mechanism and individual differences in the development of children's cooperation,and it can provide us the theoretical and pracitical guide on how to foster children's cooperation competence and their social communication skills.As the first part in the present thesis,a comprehensive literature review is made with regard to the important empirical findings and major theoretical models.The critical analysis is focused on the current situation and deficits existing in researches. On base of these,108 children aged 3-6 were presented following the objectives set forth in this research.There are three Studies in the second part of this dissertation.Study one investigates children's TOM administering a battery of TOM tasks including desire understanding,knowledge acquirement and feeling understanding.The major findings are as follows:(1) young children's TOM abilily develops as their age changes,but 4 year old is a critical stage for TOM's development.(2)there are no gender differences in children' TOM development.(3)the three tasks are sequentialxhildren understand desires in their earlist years and children' knowledge acquirement is the second.The feeling understanding is the lattest.Study two administers the cooperation board game to investigate children's coopration competence.The major findings are as follows:(1) young children's cooperation behaviour increases as their age changes,bu 3-5 year old is a rapid-developing stage for cooperation development.(2)there are no gender differences and no combanitional style differences in children'cooperation development.Study three explores the relationship between children' TOM and cooperation.The major findings are as follows:(1) children' TOM and cooperation has remarkably positive correlations.(2) knowledge acquirement task and apparent-feeling task of TOM could predict children's cooperation notably.In the end,the major findings in this research are concluded and put forward some suggestions for preschool education and the future direction of this field.