Linked Life Data

11274985

Source:http://linkedlifedata.com/resource/pubmed/id/11274985

Statements in which the resource exists as a subject.
PredicateObject
rdf:type
lifeskim:mentions
pubmed:issue
3
pubmed:dateCreated
2001-3-29
pubmed:abstractText
Numerous measures have been employed in the last 17 years to assess theory of mind (ToM). The literature reports marked variability in the age at which children succeed on these measures. To account for this variability, researchers have provided explanations ranging from cognitive shifts and voids to the inability to understand the language of the tasks or to social/pragmatic considerations, all of which tell us little if anything about the internal mechanism underlying ToM. The main purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive theoretical account of children's success and the discrepancies found across different ToM tasks. We test the hypothesis that children's understanding of ToM is sensitive to the basic elements of language, that is, to whether the language is indexical or symbolic. Support for this account was found in the analysis of selected test protocols in four published studies of ToM, and new data collected from 53 children (4--6 years) which showed that a higher percentage of children succeeded on tasks with a high ratio of indexical to symbolic references than on tasks with a high ratio of symbolic to indexical references. There was also a main effect of age with older children succeeding at higher rates on both tasks than younger children. Our findings suggest that indexical representation can afford ToM understanding in 4-year-olds, but is not sufficient for a more mature ToM. The latter requires symbolic representation that was demonstrated by the majority of 5--6-year-olds.
pubmed:language
eng
pubmed:journal
pubmed:citationSubset
IM
pubmed:status
MEDLINE
pubmed:month
Jul
pubmed:issn
0010-0277
pubmed:author
pubmed:issnType
Print
pubmed:volume
80
pubmed:owner
NLM
pubmed:authorsComplete
Y
pubmed:pagination
263-81
pubmed:dateRevised
2004-11-17
pubmed:meshHeading
pubmed:year
2001
pubmed:articleTitle
Indexical and symbolic referencing: what role do they play in children's success on theory of mind tasks?
pubmed:affiliation
Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel.
pubmed:publicationType
Journal Article