How do use and comprehension of mental-state language relate to theory of mind in middle childhood?
Introduction
This study is a contribution to the well-established line of enquiry on the relationship between development of theory of mind (ToM) – or the capacity to recognize the internal states of self and others such as desires, beliefs, emotions and intentions – and linguistic ability, in terms of competence in specific types of lexicon.
Data from previous studies on theory-of-mind development in children suggest that language plays a key role in acquiring an understanding of mental states (Astington, 2001, Harris et al., 2005, Hughes, 2011, Hughes et al., 2010, Lohman and Tomasello, 2003, Milligan et al., 2007, Ruffman et al., 2003, Slade and Ruffman, 2005). It is through language that children participate in social interaction, conversational exchanges, pretend play, story-telling and other activities fostering their ability to link manifest actions and behaviors with mental states that are inaccessible to direct observation (Nelson, 2005).
An aspect of the relationship between language and ToM which has received much attention to date is lexical semantic competence. Many studies have shown that understanding of the mind and ability to pass false-belief tasks require knowledge of the psychological lexicon (Moore et al., 1989, Olson, 1988), that is the particular terms used to describe the mental states or internal worlds of self and others. This lexicon has also been referred to as language of mind or “metacognitive language” (Astington & Pelletier, 1996) as it provides labels for mental states such as thinking, knowing, believing, and desiring. Ability to use this vocabulary is considered to be a key indicator of early ToM competencies, and a precursor of later metarepresentational ability (Bartsch & Wellman, 1995). The psychological lexicon progressively extends to describing internal states of perception, volition, emotion, cognition and moral judgment; thus, observation of children's acquisition of these terms is an excellent tool for tracking their mental development. Past research has shown that between the ages of 2 and 4 children initially use psychological terms as a “conversational device” and later as a means of referring to mental states (Astington and Peskin, 2004, Jenkins et al., 2003).
The word categories making up the mental-state language differ from one another both in complexity and in the order they are acquired by the developing child (Bretherton & Beeghly, 1982). A number of longitudinal studies (Brown and Dunn, 1991, Hughes and Dunn, 1998) have indicated that the child first uses psychological terms to refer to itself («I want», «I like», «I know») and later to refer to the mental states of others («You think», «He wants»). At around 2 years of age, children begin to make spontaneous conversational use of mental-state language relating to volition (for example, want, desire, hope, prefer) in reference to their own desires and the desires of others, and to perception (for example, see, hear, feel) in reference to the external world. At this age too, they make their first use of the lexicon of emotion, both positive (for example, happy) and negative (for example, afraid, angry). Initially they acquire the language of basic emotions (anger, fear, sadness and happiness) and subsequently that of complex and social emotions. At around 3 years of age, they start to use psychological terms relating to cognition to speak about thoughts, beliefs and imagination (for example, know, think, imagine, guess, believe, understand).
The link between use of mental state language and theory-of-mind development has been the focus of numerous studies with preschoolers. One of the aspects investigated is the correlation between maternal mental language and ToM development (Dunn et al., 1991, Ruffman et al., 2002). Longitudinal and cross-sectional studies have shown that the more a mother uses mental-state terms when speaking to her child, the better the child's understanding of false belief (Brown and Dunn, 1991, Symons et al., 2006) and of emotion (Taumoepeau and Ruffman, 2008, Wang et al., 2010) and the more frequently the child itself makes use of psychological lexicon (Howard et al., 2008, Scholnick and Hall, 1991). Other research with preschool children has indicated an association between the frequency with which they use mental-state terms during spontaneous conversation and their scores on false-belief ToM tasks (Brown et al., 1996, Hughes et al., 2007, Ornaghi and Grazzani Gavazzi, 2009, Ruffman et al., 2002, Symons, 2004).
Fewer studies however have investigated the relationship between ToM and mental state language in school-age children, despite the fact that competence in both these areas continues to develop throughout the primary school years and beyond (Camaioni et al., 1998, Fox, 1991, Lecce et al., 2009, Longobardi et al., 2009, Pelletier, 2006). In this age range, ToM is also defined as ability to mentalize, that is to refer to mental states, explicitly label them and use them to explain behavior (Meins, Fernyhough, Johnson, & Lidstone, 2006). During primary school education, language plays a role in promoting general cognitive development as well as more sophisticated mind reading abilities by means of literacy processes, conversation and metalinguistic activities including reflection on the psychological lexicon (Astington, 2000, Kamawar and Olson, 2009). The capacity to use and reflect on mental-state language is a correlate of academic achievement during the childhood years (Olson, 1994, Pelletier, 2006) in which ability to pass both second-order false-belief tasks and emotion understanding tests has been found to improve significantly, particularly between the ages of 7–8 and 10–11 (Pons and Harris, 2005, Pons et al., 2004).
A careful analysis of the literature, as we shall see shortly, reveals that most of the research carried out on the topic to date has examined in childhood the use of mental-state language with relatively few studies focusing on the comprehension of such language.
The use of mental state language in children over the ages of 6–7 years has been evaluated by means of non-discursive or non-interactional tasks, such as analysis of their essay-writing. For example, Camaioni et al. (1998) conducted a study in which they asked third and fifth grade primary school children to complete one fictitious story and to invent another. The older children used a significantly higher number of cognitive terms and a significantly lower number of terms relating to perception and volition than the younger children; furthermore, in fifth grade the children used a richer cognitive lexicon including not only verbs such as know, think, remember but also more complex terms such as reflect, think up, be disconcerted. In addition, there were interesting gender differences: girls produced a greater variety of terms referring to inner states and positive emotions than did boys. However, this study did not examine the relationship between psychological lexicon and theory-of-mind development.
Children's use of internal-state language was also investigated by Meins et al. (2006). The authors used two tasks (book narration and describe-a-friend) to evaluate mental state talk, and the strange stories task to assess ToM, in a sample of 7–9-year-olds. They found that in this age range theory-of-mind performance was not related to children's use of psychological lexicon. These findings are similar to those reported by Charman and Shmueli-Goetz (1998) in a study with a sample of 6–8-year old children whose use of internal state talk while narrating a wordless book was unrelated to measures of ToM.
Somewhat different results have emerged from two recent Italian studies. Lecce et al. (2009) explored third grade children's internal-state talk in relation to theory of mind, while controlling for language ability. They found that when the effects of individual differences in verbal ability were partialled, children's inner-state talk was still significantly correlated with performance on theory-of-mind tasks. In a study with children between 8 and 10.5 years of age, Ornaghi, Grazzani Gavazzi, and Zanetti (2010) also found some correlations between use of internal state talk, measured by a non-interactional task, and scores on ToM tasks.
With regard to the comprehension of mental-state language, early studies typically examined this variable in relation to age, academic performance and learning (e.g., Astington & Olson, 1990). More recent work has begun to focus on the relationship between comprehension of mentalistic language and ToM development. Antonietti, Liverta Sempio, Marchetti, and Astington (2006) used a measure to evaluate understanding of internal-state language, specifically mental verbs such as remembering and knowing, in a study with preschool and primary school children (4, 6, and 8 years old). They found comprehension of mental language to correlate with understanding of both epistemic and emotional inner states; however, the correlation between mental language understanding and performance on second-order false-belief tasks was low, presumably because the latter are difficult for children in this age range.
In a study of theory of mind and metacognitive language in relation to reading skills, Pelletier (2006) found strong correlations between comprehension of language of mind and theory of mind, for both second grade and fourth grade children. Similarly, Ornaghi et al. (2010) in the study cited above found that metacognitive and metalinguistic competencies, including comprehension of mental states, predicted children's scores on second-order false-belief tasks.
In sum, the studies reported to date have yielded partly contradictory results which do not enable firm conclusions to be drawn with regard to the relationship between psychological lexicon and theory of mind in school-age children. Most of these studies have focused either solely on the use, or solely on the comprehension of, psychological lexicon, without always making a clear theoretical distinction between the two variables. For example, some authors review the results of prior research on the use of psychological lexicon before going on to report the adoption of measures of mental language comprehension in their own work.
Given this research background, we chose to concurrently examine the relative contributions of use and comprehension of mental-state language to variance in the ToM performance of primary school children. In addition, because mentalistic language includes both cognitive and emotional terms, we also set out to investigate the impact of use and comprehension of mental terms on emotional theory of mind (Harris, 1989).
The overall aim of this work was to explore the link between use and comprehension of mental state language on the one hand, and epistemic and emotional theory of mind on the other, in children between the ages of 8 and 11. More specifically, we wished to verify whether there were correlations between frequency of use and/or comprehension of psychological language, and performance on theory-of-mind tasks. We made no particular prediction about the association between use of mental-state talk and ToM, given that the findings reported in the literature to date are ambiguous and contradictory. In contrast, on the basis of previous studies we hypothesized that a significant correlation would be found between participants’ performance on metacognitive language comprehension tests, and their scores on theory-of-mind tasks.
Section snippets
Participants
Taking part in the study were 110 children (55 boys and 55 girls) of school age (mean age = 9 years and 7 months; SD = 12.7 months). Of these, 49 were third grade students (mean age = 8 years and 6 months; SD = 3.1 months) and 61 were fifth grade students (mean age = 10 years and 6 months; SD = 4.4 months). The children were pupils at two state primary schools located in predominantly middleclass urban districts of Northern Italy. Parental consent was obtained for all participants. The protocols of foreign
Results
The results are presented in three sections covering general descriptive statistics and age comparison, correlations, and regression analyses. No significant differences were found as a function of gender in terms of performance on any of the administered measures.
Discussion
Our general aim in carrying out this study was to extend the existing research on mental state language in pre-school kids by examining the mental-state lexicon of primary school children. More specifically, we wished to explore whether at this age there are still correlations between both use and understanding of psychological terms on the one hand, and development of epistemic and emotional ToM on the other. As far as we know, no previous studies have simultaneously investigated use and
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by a grant from F.A. – 2009 (University of Milano-Bicocca) to Ilaria Grazzani Gavazzi. We are very grateful to the head-teachers, teachers and pupils of the participating schools. We wish to thank Dr. Clare O'Sullivan for the English revision of the paper, Dr. Alessandro Pepe for his assistance with the statistical analysis and Prof. David R. Olson for his encouraging comments on a draft version of this article.
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