A Comparative Study On The Training Effect Of Group Sandplay And Speech Pretend Play On The Development Of The Theory Of Mind Of Children In 3 And 4 Years Old

Theory of mind is the ability of individuals to speculate on their own and others’ mind states(such as beliefs,needs,wishes,intentions,emotions,etc.)and to make causal prediction and interpretation of others’ behaviors.It is greatly important to children’s social development.At present,there are different results on the development order of domestic children’s theory of mind.The best training methods of theory of mind and its influence on executive function need to be further explored.Therefore,in order to verify the development order of children’s theory of mind and provide empirical support for the training of theory of mind,the first study was designed,which selected 109 children from two middle classes and two small classes in a kindergarten in Haikou as subjects,65 subjects who met the age requirements and pass the speech control task completed the scale of theory of mind.In order to explore the effectiveness of group sandplay in improving children’s theory of mind,to seek the best way of theory of mind intervention,and to explore the impact of group sandplay and speech pretend play on the executive function,with improving children’s theory of mind,the second study was designed.From the 65 subjects in Study 1,39 children aged 3and 4 with theory of mind scores in the later 60% were selected and matched into two experimental groups and one control group.24 subjects in two experimental groups were trained by group sandplay and speech pretend game,and the control group did not carry out any training.The conclusions are as follows:(1)The development of domestic children’s theory of mind generally follows the general law,but there are subtle differences."Belief emotion" precedes "false belief",and the order of development is "different desire","different belief","knowledge and ignorance","belief emotion","false belief"(content false belief "and" obvious false belief "),and" appearance "True emotions.".(2)Group sandplay and speech pretend play are both effective for the training of theory of mind.Both training methods can improve children’s total score of theory of mind by improving children’s scores in the tasks of obvious false belief and belief emotion.The group sandplay has significant training effect on the task of “ knowing and not knowing”,“appearance real emotion”.(3)Group sandplay and speech pretend play not only improve the scores of theory of mind,but also significantly improve the scores of children’s executive function.Group sandplay has significant training effect on inhibition control.