The influence of language on theory of mind: a training study
The influence of language on theory of mind: a training study
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DOI：
10.1111/1467-7687.00289
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发表时间：
2003-06-01
影响因子：
3.7
通讯作者：
Tager-Flusberg, H
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Hale, CM;Tager-Flusberg, H
本研究探讨了语言在心理理论发展中的作用。研究假设，句子补语的句法和语义特征的习得有助于心理表征理论的发展。60名未通过错误信念和句子补语前测的学龄前儿童被随机分配到错误信念、句子补语或关系从句的训练中(作为对照组)。所有的孩子都在一系列不同的心理理论任务、句子补语和关系从句上进行了后测。主要结果是，接受句子补语训练的小组不仅获得了训练所培养的语言知识，而且显著提高了他们在一系列心理理论任务中的得分。相比之下，错误信念训练只会提高心理理论分数，但对语言没有影响。接受关系从句训练的控制组在心理理论后测中没有表现出任何进步。这些发现证明句子补语的习得有助于学龄前儿童心理理论的发展。
This study investigated the role of language in the development of theory of mind. It was hypothesized that the acquisition of the syntactic and semantic properties of sentential complements would facilitate the development of a representational theory of mind. Sixty preschoolers who failed false belief and sentential complement pretests were randomly assigned to training on false belief, sentential complements or relative clauses (as a control group). All the children were post-tested on a set of different theory of mind tasks, sentential complements and relative clauses. The main findings were that the group trained on sentential complements not only acquired the linguistic knowledge fostered by the training, but also significantly increased their scores on a range of theory of mind tasks. In contrast, false belief training only led to improved theory of mind scores but had no influence on language. The control group, trained on relative clauses, showed no improvement on theory of mind post-tests. These findings are taken as evidence that the acquisition of sentential complements contributes to the development of theory of mind in preschoolers.