Concurrent Relations Between Perspective-Taking Skills, Desire Understanding, and Internal-State Vocabulary

Abstract

Recent studies suggest that there appears to be a similar developmental sequence in the understanding of mental states in both internal-state language and in standard theory-of-mind tasks. These findings suggest possible developmental relations between children's ability to talk and think about the mind. Two experiments investigated the concurrent relations between internal-state vocabulary and theory-of-mind abilities in 30-month-old toddlers. In Experiment 1, children's internal-state language vocabulary was significantly and specifically related to their concurrent understanding of others' visual and emotional perspectives and was less strongly related to desire understanding. Experiment 2 replicated and extended these findings by examining the link between internal-state vocabulary and visual perspective-taking and comprehension of own versus other's desire, controlling for general verbal skills. Children with a more developed internal-state vocabulary performed better on perspective-taking tasks. These findings suggest that labeling and reasoning about mental states are related abilities at the early stages of theory-of-mind development.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This research was supported by: Le Fonds Québécois de la Recherche sur la Société et la Culture and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for grants awarded to Diane Poulin-Dubois; the German Research Council for a grant awarded to Beate Sodian; and le Fonds québécois de la recherche sur la société et la culture, the Centre for Research in Human Development, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, which awarded graduate fellowships to Sabrina Chiarella to help fund the project.

All authors would like to extend their gratitude to Dr. Petra Hauf and Dr. Elena Geangu for their collaboration on this project, including data collection in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, as well as Dr. Paul Hastings. Authors S. S. C. and D. P.-D. would also like to thank Amanda Aldercotte and Marie-Pier Gosselin for their help in data collection and coding. Authors S. K. and B. S. would also like to thank their lab manager Sabrina, as well Hannah Eisenbeis, Maria Vuori, and all the student assistants in the baby lab. Finally, the authors would like to express their gratitude to the research participants whose contribution made this project possible.

Notes

t = trend, p < .10. *p < .05. **p < .01.

t = trend, p < .10. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.