Developmental continuity between social-cognitive skills at age 2 and false belief understanding at age 4

Abstract

A number of studies have examined the developmental continuity between early social-cognitive skills present in infancy and later theory of mind (ToM). However, less is known about the relation between social-cognitive skills present at age 2 and false belief understanding that emerges around 4 to 5 years of age. The present longitudinal study examined the predictive relation between visual perspective taking, pretend play, and internal state language at age 2, and false belief understanding at age 4 in 82 children. Hierarchical regression analysis showed that children's Level-1 visual perspective taking ability at age 2 was a significant, unique predictor of false belief understanding at age 4, after controlling for verbal ability and executive functioning.

Introduction

Around the age of 4 years, children acquire the explicit understanding of false belief (Wellman, Cross, & Watson, 2001). False belief understanding is often considered to be the hallmark of preschoolers' developing theory of mind (ToM) because this understanding indicates that children differentiate between mind and world (i.e., that someone can have a mental state that differs from reality; Astington, 1993; Perner, 1991). False belief understanding is part of a developmental trajectory of social understanding that can be traced back to infancy and extends into adulthood (Carpendale & Lewis, 2015; Wellman, 2017). More recent research has focused on identifying precursors of false belief understanding and detecting continuities in theory of mind skills that extend from infancy into early childhood (e.g., Brooks & Meltzoff, 2015; Sodian & Kristen-Antonow, 2015; Thoermer, Sodian, Vuori, Perst, & Kristen, 2012; for a review, see Derksen, Hunsche, Giroux, Connolly, & Bernstein, 2018). This line of research is of theoretical importance as it informs us about the antecedents and composition of false belief understanding, the developmental progression of social understanding, and it is of practical importance as it may help in the treatment of children with deficits in social understanding (Frith, 2012).

The social skills in infants that have been shown to predict theory of mind skills and false belief understanding in preschoolers include attention to goal-directedness, declarative pointing, and coordinated visual engagement (Charman et al., 2000; Nelson, Adamson, & Bakeman, 2008; Sodian & Kristen-Antonow, 2015; Wellman, Phillips, Dunphy‐Lelii, & LaLonde, 2004). Attention to goal-directed action in infancy predicts false belief understanding in preschoolers even after controlling for preschoolers' verbal ability, intelligence, and cognitive control skills (Aschersleben, Hofer, & Jovanovic, 2008; Wellman, Lopez-Duran, LaBounty, & Hamilton, 2008). Moreover, the continuity appears to be specific to social skills as attention to nonsocial events did not predict later theory of mind skills (Yamaguchi, Kuhlmeier, Wynn, & vanMarle, 2009). However, less is known about continuities between social skills that emerge after infancy, at around 2 years of age, and later false belief understanding. Specifically, previous research has identified three skills that emerge in toddlerhood as potential precursors of false belief understanding: visual perspective taking, pretend play, and mental (or internal) state language (Carpendale & Lewis, 2015; Flavell, 1992; Lillard, 1993; Perner, 1991). However, there have been relatively few studies on the relations between these skills at age 2 and explicit false belief understanding that emerges around age 4. Furthermore, there are methodological problems with some of these studies, and findings from some studies have not been consistent. Thus, the goal of the current study was to assess the continuity between social skills which emerge in toddlerhood and false belief understanding to help us better understand the developmental trajectory of social cognition from infancy to early childhood.

Section snippets

Visual perspective taking and false belief understanding

False belief understanding has been conceptualized as a form of epistemic perspective taking (Perner, Stummer, Sprung, & Doherty, 2002; Moll & Meltzoff, 2011). Indeed, Perner (1991) has argued that ToM, more generally, involves a representational understanding of differences in (epistemic) perspectives, or that one and the same situation or context can be represented differently. As such, it would be expected to be related to earlier-developing forms of perspective taking such as visual

Internal state vocabulary and false belief understanding

The developmental relation between language and false belief understanding has received considerable attention. A meta-analysis by Milligan, Astington, and Dack (2007) revealed that verbal ability and false belief understanding reciprocally influence each other; however, the influence of verbal ability on false belief understanding was stronger than the influence of false belief understanding on verbal ability. There is also evidence for a long-term influence of verbal ability on false belief

Pretend play and false belief understanding

Young children's pretend play has been linked to false belief understanding in a number of ways (see Lillard, 1993). For example, Leslie (1987) suggested that pretense may be a precursor to having a ToM because both require a metarepresentational system, that is, a system that produces representations of representations. Meins et al. (2013) propose that pretend play serves as a context for learning the possibility of assigning different meanings to an object, which promotes the awareness of

The present study

Currently, there are still relatively few studies that have examined the continuity of social skills and false belief understanding in preschoolers. As we have summarized, the findings are not always consistent, and some studies have methodological problems (e.g., task selection, floor effects). The aim of the present study is to contribute to this literature by examining relations between pretend play, internal state vocabulary, and Level 1 visual perspective taking, which begin to emerge at

Participants

The original sample consisted of 101 parents and their children who were recruited through community advertisements in two metropolitan areas of western Canada as part of a longitudinal study examining the relation between executive functioning and ToM (see Müller, Liebermann-Finestone, Carpendale, Hammond, & Bibok, 2012). Of these children, 18 were dropped from the analyses because their parents missed one or more appointments. An additional child was dropped because he was later diagnosed

Missing data

Table A1 displays descriptive statistics for all measures by assessment point. Variations in task sample size were due to children's request to end a task or their failure to understand or perform a task.

Expectation maximization (EM) was used to impute missing data for the remaining variables. EM is an iterative procedure that first obtains maximum likelihood estimators on the basis of existing data. Next, it uses these parameters to estimate the missing values. Having estimated that missing

Discussion

The current study examined the developmental relations between a variety of different social skills at age 2 years (comprehension of pretense, Level 1 visual perspective taking, mental state vocabulary) and false belief understanding at age 4 years. We found that Level 1 visual perspective taking significantly correlated to false belief understanding at age 4 years. In contrast to a previous studies (Brooks & Meltzoff, 2015; Olineck & Poulin-Dubois, 2007; Youngblade & Dunn, 1995), mental state

Acknowledgement

This research was supported by a doctoral scholarship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) awarded to the first author, and by SSHRC Grant No. 410-2005-0644 awarded to the second and third authors. We thank an anonymous reviewer whose comments helped improve this manuscript.

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