Relations between theory of mind and family environment among Brazilian preschool children

Abstract

Given the importance of the environment for the development of the theory of mind (ToM) in childhood, as well as the scarcity of studies in low-income Latin American countries, we aimed to investigate the relation between family environment characteristics and performance in ToM tasks in a group of Brazilian children. A total of 49 children participated, whose ages ranged between 3 and 5 years (M = 4.43; SD = 0.71), all of whom attended a public kindergarten school located in the metropolitan region of São Paulo, Brazil, and took the Theory of mind test for children (TMTC). The observation of the characteristics of the family environment was conducted by using the Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (HOME) instrument in the very home setting of each participating child. By controlling the effects of children’s age, intelligence, vocabulary, and mother’s and father’s educational level, a consistent positive, significant, and low-magnitude correlation was found between HOME’s Responsiveness subscale with the total score in TMTC. A robust regression analysis also showed that individual and contextual variables (above cited, plus sex) and Responsiveness accounted for 28.4% of ToM variance. This study corroborates previous findings on the relation between family aspects and ToM, specifically highlighting parents’ responsiveness.

Keywords:

• Home environment
• preschoolers
• responsiveness
• theory of mind

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgment to the CNPq—National Council for Scientific and Technological Development for the CNPq Productivity scholarship to NM Dias and the Scientific Initiation scholarship to LDP Silva.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).