How the Childs Mind Develops, 2nd Edition

More rarely an utterance was solely nonverbal, such as when the mother pointed to answer the child's question. Two or more transcribers contributed to each transcript so that both views of the video record informed the transcription and any discrepancies could be discussed before a final transcript was produced. By consulting both the transcript and the videotape of the hiding game, two trained coders described each of the mothers' utterances. The coders' first task was to decide if the utterance was relevant to the task.

If it was relevant, coders used mutually exclusive and exhaustive codes to describe the utterance's role and content, and whether nonverbal support accompanied the utterance. A coding manual is available upon request. Coders decided if the utterance was relevant to the task. Utterances about the hiding game were considered relevant. Those that were not e.

Next coders decided the role of the utterance McArthur et al. Choices for role were statements e. Then coders identified the content of the utterance McArthur et al. Coders also indicated whether or not nonverbal scaffolds accompanied the utterance. Nonverbal scaffolds included gesturing e.

Coders were unaware of which visits were used for reliability. For the mothers' utterance coding, reliability was assessed by calculating Cohen's kappa Cohen, Average ratings for children's understanding of knowledge access, deception, and false belief at each visit are listed in Table 1. Scores are means; all but the composite percentage are means of 1—5 ratings. N varies by variable due to the not observed code. An understanding of mind composite score, expressed as a percentage, was formed by dividing the average of the three items by 5, the highest rating for means see Table 1. Performance on false belief tasks also improved with age: Average ratings for children's positive affect and engagement are also given in Table 1.

Most children were enthusiastic i. Children remained highly engaged with the task at all three visits. Most children readily participated in the trick, but 12, 2, and 3 children needed coaxing or encouragement from the mother to go along with the trick at the three annual visits, respectively. The missing data resulting from the use of the not observed code were noteworthy. Analyses were conducted to determine if the children whom coders could not rate on a particular item were different from the children whom they were able to rate on the item in terms of gender, other understanding of mind item ratings, positive affect, and engagement with the task.

Only one significant difference was found.

Gender related to understanding of mind composite percentages at the month visit and to whether children passed both false belief tasks at the month visit. Descriptive statistics for mothers' utterances are listed in Table 2. About half were identified as relevant to the hiding game. Percentages by role as well as the percentage that contained some form of nonverbal support are also listed in Table 2. Although statements, imperatives, and tag questions have often been combined into a single variable and labeled directive utterances e.

Scores are either mean frequencies or mean percents. Role percents and content frequencies are for relevant utterances. Regarding content, mothers talked often about deception, less about false beliefs see Table 2 for means , and rarely about knowledge access or belief-based emotions. Only 2, 5, and 6 mothers at the three annual visits, respectively, talked about knowledge access and only 11, 14, and 17 about belief-based emotions.

Consequently, mothers' utterances regarding knowledge access were not analyzed further and those few utterances regarding belief-based emotions were combined with the closely related false belief utterances; means and standard deviations are listed in Table 3. Analyses were conducted to determine if the children whom coders could not rate on a particular scale were different from the children whom coders were able to rate on the scale in terms of the frequency of their mothers' utterances that focused on the corresponding content.

To see if mothers adjusted the role of their utterances to suit their child's understanding of mind, correlations between the role of the mother's utterance and the child's understanding of mind composite score were examined see Table 4. Given the lack of adjustments mothers seem to be making relative to their children's understanding of mind, an alternative question emerged. Did the mother have a particular conversational style that she consistently preferred regardless of her child's expertise or age?

Further examination of the correlations between the roles of the utterance at each of the visits suggested that this hypothesis may have merit see Table 3. Correlations are Pearson product-moment. To determine if mothers tailored the content of their utterances to their children's expertise, correlations between the children's ratings for understanding of knowledge access, deception, and false belief, and the corresponding content of mothers' utterances were examined.

Mothers' utterances that focused on knowledge access or belief-based emotions were not examined because they occurred too rarely. Using Cohen's characterization of correlation coefficients of. Additionally, the role and content of mothers' utterances did not predict understanding of mind scores at later visits. Correlations are Spearman rank. This longitudinal study produced nuanced descriptions of children's playful use of their emerging understanding of mind as they engaged in a shared hiding game with their mothers. Consistent with prior research Wellman et al.

More interesting, we found that various aspects of the children's understanding of mind during the hiding game developed sequentially. Moreover, when we looked at children's understanding of mind in finer detail, slight adjustments in mothers' scaffolding came to light. The idea that children's understanding of mind would follow a predictable pattern of development is not new.

In a series of scalable experimental tasks, Wellman and Liu extended this developmental progression.

Children understand that individuals can hold different desires before different beliefs. An understanding of beliefs precedes an understanding of knowledge access which precedes an understanding of false beliefs. In the current study our goal was to extend the literature by focusing not on experimenter-led tasks but on an alternative context, a playful social interaction.

Our observations of children during a hiding game with their mothers provided detailed evidence of the progressive development of an understanding of mind. As children played a trick on the experimenter, they expressed an understanding of knowledge access before an understanding of deception and false beliefs, and expressed an understanding of deception before an understanding of false beliefs. Children's abilities to use their understanding of knowledge access increased and became more fine-tuned as they progressed through the preschool years.

All children, even at months of age, seemed to have some, albeit often immature, ideas about how an individual gains access to information. Initially, most children tried to hide the toys by returning them to their original locations or by using fallible hiding strategies such as hiding a toy in an uncovered box. Typically, mothers intervened by suggesting alternate hiding locations or reminding the children of critical strategic moves e.

Over time, the child's use of deception improved markedly, and by 66 months of age, almost all children skillfully hid the toys with few if any contributions from their mothers and confidently planned what they should do when the experimenter returned. Children's expression of their false belief understanding showed the most dramatic shift over the preschool years. Nearly two-thirds of the children at 42 months of age displayed essentially no understanding of false beliefs. When mothers questioned where the experimenter might look for her toys when she returned, these children all persistently answered with reality-based answers even if the mother attempted to talk through the steps of the deception or repeat and rephrase her questions; see Figure 1 top for an example.

By 54 months of age, about a third of the children received the midpoint score, vacillating between reality- and belief-based answers when responding to their mothers' questions regarding the experimenter's false belief. See Figure 1 bottom for an example of this interesting transitional phenomenon. Another third of the children showed sophisticated, adult-like understanding of false beliefs, always responding appropriately to their mothers' questions or skillfully using false hints to mislead the experimenter.

By 66 months of age, most children received the highest rating for their expression of their false belief understanding during the hiding game, and no child received a rating lower than the midpoint. Generally children readily and enthusiastically participated in the hiding game. Few of them needed coaxing or encouragement to gleefully join in the game, giggling and plotting about how to best trick the experimenter. During the first two visits, the more enthusiastic children showed greater understanding of mind than their few indifferent peers. Perhaps some amount of understanding was necessary to elicit the positive affect that often accompanies a well-played trick.

The excitement and enthusiasm that permeated the vast majority of our observations suggest that the hiding game may be a particularly suitable context to explore active, emotionally engaging interactions during which children's understanding of others' minds develops Hobson, ; Reddy, All of the mothers in this study were willing and able to participate in an experimental manipulation on behalf of the experimenter.

Their cooperation not only allowed us to observe the child with a knowledgeable intimate partner, it also let us to see how caregivers scaffold interactions. The mother clearly played a critical role. At times, she guided the child's participation, often serving as a role model quietly tiptoeing around the room or helping to find a good hiding place. Her curious questions to the child regarding the experimenter's knowledge of the toys' whereabouts and where she would look for them provided the backdrop for data gathered about the child's understanding of false beliefs.

Our findings suggest that over time, mothers may make subtle adjustment in the content of their utterances, keeping it one step ahead of the child's understanding of mind. At months of age, when the child's behavior indicated mastery of knowledge access understanding, trends indicated that the mother spoke more frequently of deception, and when the child seemed to skillfully deceive and plot the trick, the mother focused her utterances on false beliefs.

When children were months old, almost all acted as if they understood deception, leading the mothers to focus more on developing an understanding of false beliefs. And finally, when, at months of age, the large majority of the children received the highest rating for understanding false beliefs during the hiding game, trends showed that even the slightest flaw in a child's use of this understanding often prompted the mother to discuss false beliefs, presumably to ensure the child fully understood false beliefs.

However, findings were not as straightforward as we expected, and it is likely that mothers drew also on their vast store of their everyday experiences with the child as they decided how best to engage and guide the child in the hiding game. Mothers did not seem to systematically vary the role of their utterances, supporting the conclusion that across the preschool years mothers consistently used a particular conversational style during the hiding game.

Nevertheless, one interesting finding did emerge. Most of these questions led to a single answer and required the child only to agree or disagree.

It is noteworthy, however, the gender differences were not found at all ages and in both contexts. Thus an explanation of gender differences need to take into account not only enduring differences in skills such as language but also more fleeting variations in how boys and girls may be differentially affected by the demands of specific situations. The current study has limitations regarding the children's ages, the format of the hiding game, and cultural relevance.

Including younger children would likely yield a wider range of children's understanding of knowledge access, and older children might allow for the observation of mother-child dyads exploring belief-based emotions. Although the relatively brief hiding game within our laboratory did generate rich observations, the game likely did not fully capture all of the strategies mothers used to foster the development of the child's understanding of mind.

And finally, when interpreting our results, it is important to note that this study is placed within a culture in which adults frequently engage children in child-focused play and conversations that often involve reciprocal dialogue; it is not likely that they would generalize to cultures in which learning through observation of adult activities predominates Rogoff, Despite these limitations, our hiding game may be a particularly revealing context for the study of variations in the development of social cognition, especially for children with autism spectrum disorders, who appear to have a theory of mind deficit when compared to their typically developing peers Baron-Cohen et al.

Observing children with autism during parent-child interactions may be especially beneficial given the motivational and situational factors that make experimenter-led theory of mind tasks particularly difficult and error prone in this group of children Hutchins et al. Only four children followed the predicted pattern of development suggesting that the developmental progression of understanding of mind for children with autism may not be as uniform as it in typically developing children.

In conclusion, understanding of mind is a multifaceted construct, and the study of its development benefits from complementary methods of study. In the current study, a playful hiding game provided a revealing context in which to observe children's understanding of mind while engaging in social interaction with their mothers.

Children's understanding of mind not only increased with age, but also developed sequentially through the preschool years. This fully updated edition of How the Child's Mind Develops is an integrated and thought-provoking account of the central issues in child development. Parents, professionals and students will find it an invaluable introduction. Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate? Let us know about it. Does this product have an incorrect or missing image? Send us a new image.

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