| In recent years, researchers pay more attention to the development of children's theory of mind, which is a new research area in children's social cognitive development. Theory of mind, which not only concerns the understanding to one's perception, attention, belief, etc., but also concerns the understanding to one's emotion and desire, comprises different aspects. The links and differentiations among the aspects in the development of children's theory of mind are an important theoretical issue and a fruitful direction for research. However, the previous results are not consistent for the differences of measures, such as the difference in experimental tasks and the way to question. Furthermore, the development of children's attributions to the second-order mental states is another valuable direction for research. It is these attributions that underlie much of our social reasoning and strongly related to the social interaction, social communication and peer relationship in our every day's life. But systematic research efforts have been rare in the area. Considering all of above, the general tendencies of the development of children's attribution to second-order mental states, the links and differentiations among the aspects, and their relations to children's peer status and prosocial behavior remain a big area to be explored.As the first step 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, two related studies on 133 children aged 3-6 were presented following the objectives set forth in this research. Study one administered two second-order false-belief tasks and two second-order emotion understanding tasks, and investigated the link and differentiation between children's attribution of second-order false-belief and their second-order emotion understanding. Study 2 explored the relations among children's theory of mind, peer status and prosocial behavior, and the measures of study 2 included theory of mind, peer acceptance, as well as teacher ratings of prosocial behavior.The major findings in the above two studies are as follows:(1) Being different aspects of children's theory of mind, the attribution of children's false-belief and emotion understanding could exist as an independent mental construct, and a moderate correlation was also found between the constructs.(2) Children could attribute second-order ignorance at about 4 years old. There was about l-to-2 year lag between the attribution of second-order ignorance and second-order false belief and the critical period for the development of children's attribution of the second-order false-belief was around age 6.(3) Children could understand one's emotion at about 4 years old. There was a developmental gap of 1- to-2 years between children's emotion decoding and second-order emotion understanding. Children understood the second-order emotion at about 6 years old.(4) Children's second-order emotion understanding and second-order false belief emerged at the same age, but we also found that second-order emotion understanding was easier than the attribution of second-order false belief.(5) A majority of 6 year-old children were able to justify their correct false-belief or emotion understanding response based on genuine second-order reasoning, while their wrong answers to second-order false belief questions or second-order emotion understanding questions were mostly based on the first-order reasoning.(6) The popular children achieved higher scores of theory of mind, and positive correlation existed between children's social preference and theory of mind.(7) Children's social preference significantly positively correlated with their prosocial behavior.(8) There was a significantly positively correlation between children's theory of mind and prosocial behavior.(9) For the total group of children, the relation between children's th... |
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