Theory of mind at home: linking authoritative and authoritarian parenting styles to children's social understanding

Abstract

Building on Vinden's pioneering research [(2001). Parenting attitudes and children's understanding of mind: A comparison of Korean American and Anglo-American families. Cognitive Development, 16, 793–809], we examined how parents’ use of authoritative versus authoritarian styles of discipline related to their children's development of theory of mind (ToM). ToM was assessed using standard false belief tests and a developmental ToM Scale [Wellman, H. M., & Liu, D. (2004). Scaling of theory-of-mind tasks. Child Development, 75(2), 523–541] comprising five reliably sequential steps of ToM understanding from awareness of others’ desires through false belief to the recognition of hidden emotion that even 8-year-olds often have difficulty with. In contrast to previous largely null results, our results from a sample of 30 Anglo-Australian children aged 5–12 years and their 30 parents showed, for the first time, that there are significant negative links of child ToM with parental authoritarianism and significant positive links, independent of child age and language skill, between ToM understanding and authoritative parenting. These results contribute to a growing body of research on how family processes interconnect with children's social understanding and social adjustment.

Keywords:

• theory of mind
• parenting
• family communication

Notes on contibutors

Jessica O'Reilly is a graduate student in the School of Psychology at the University of Queensland, Australia, currently completing her PhD under the supervision of Candida Peterson. Her interests centre around the links between theory of mind (ToM) understanding and parenting patterns, including influences of culture and disciplinary teaching styles. She is inspired to discover how new research evidence on family and social inputs into the child's ToM development can ultimately be applied to help families in difficulty, including those suffering the aftermath of abusive maltreatment.

Candida C. Peterson, PhD is professor of Psychology at the University of Queensland, Australia, and a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. Her more than 100 publications (books, refereed journal articles and chapters) in the field of developmental psychology explore how the growth of social understanding in children with autism, deafness, blindness and typical development is shaped by conversation and social interaction, especially family communication patterns and pretending, confiding and disputing with peers and siblings. Her recent discoveries of important parallels in theory of mind (ToM) development between children with autism and those profoundly deaf children who grow up in hearing families, together with equally important contrasts between these groups and signing deaf children from signing deaf families, have helped to fuel international scientific debates over the origins of ToM and social intelligence generally.