How Language and Socioeconomic Status Affect Theory of Mind

This was written for my developmental psychology class.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How Language and Socioeconomic Status Affect Theory of Mind

Courtney L. Ruggiano

Developmental Psychology

Pennsylvania State University

            Children’s awareness of their own thought processes begin at a very young age, as early as two years old; however, their comprehension is very limited. As adults, we rely on cognitive activities (believing, guessing, forgetting, etc.) to understand others’ behavior. But young children do not have the mental capacity to make these inferences. At around age two, children begin to realize that others can have different likes and emotions from their own and initiate the assembly of their theory of mind. They can use and understand some mental terms, but almost always fail false-belief tasks. As they approach age three, many children demonstrate mentally thinking about an object, even if they cannot see or touch it. They typically still fail most false-belief tasks while building a belief-desire theory. They tend to accentuate wishes over wants. By age four, many children begin to understand that beliefs influence others actions. As children grow older, their understanding of false-belief becomes stronger. Many different factors contribute to a child’s theory of mind, including language, cognitive abilities, make-believe play, and social interactions (Berk, 2008).

            Since a link has been found between theory of mind and language, regards have been given to test whether language affects children’s ability to pass certain false-belief tasks. First, researchers have looked at specific structures in language. Many language structures have different meanings when it comes to the connotation of truth (Tardif, Wellman, & Cheung, 2004; Shazt, Diesendruck, Martinez-Beck, & Akar, 2003). For example, take the Spanish word creer which means to believe. Creer uses the reflexive se to make it a false-belief; whereas, without the reflexive, it holds a neutral truth-value (Shazt et al., 2003). In the study conducted by Shazt et al. (2003), there is evidence that Spanish-speaking children whose questions used the word creer were able to pass certain false-belief tasks earlier than those who did not (Tardif et al., 2004).

            Another factor influencing children’s theory of mind is their cognitive abilities and make-believe play. Because young children are not able to understand that other people do not know what they know, they have difficulty putting dampers on their natural responses to answering false-belief task questions. Being able to engage in make-believe play offers many benefits to cognition. Children role-play in situations that tend to be unreal and then rationalize about them (Harris & Leevers, 2000 as cited in Berk, 2008). When children are involved in a wide variety of pretend play, they tend to have better reasoning skills and fare much better on false-belief tasks (Riggs & Peterson, 2000 as cited in Berk, 2008). Children younger than five rely on direct observable knowledge (Berk, 2008).

            In recent years, many researchers have looked at the difficulties children have with false-belief tasks. In a study done by Diane Louise Szarkowicz (1999), she looked at whether or not children were failing false-belief tasks because of cognition or methodology. Because many false-belief tasks are formal in context, children tend to not do as well as if they are more naturalistic in nature. One example given by Szarkowicz was a study focusing on language. In the study, children as young as three years old were able to use mental terms as mental references (Dunn, 1991; Shaz, Wellman, & Silber, 1983 as cited in Szarkowicz, 1999). The results of another study showed that making the task “…more true to life…” and allowing the child to physically participate in the task yielded a higher percentage of success (Szarkowicz, 1999).

            In order to test this hypothesis, I used two different tasks, the second one focusing on Szarkowicz’s (1999) study. Each task was performed on four different children, three females and one male. Two of the females are three years old, one from low-SES parents (Child 1) and the other from high-SES parents (Child 3). One of the females is four and from high-SES parents (Child 4), whereas the male is five and from low-SES parents (Child 2).

In the first experiment, I used two Macaroni N’ Cheese® boxes, one completely covered in white paper. The first box was empty while the covered box contained the macaroni. After showing both boxes to each child, I introduced a stuffed-bunny named Daisy. I based this experiment on the example found in Laura Berk’s textbook. Before opening each box, Child 1 thought both contained macaroni before opening them. When I asked which box she thought Daisy would look for the macaroni, she answered, “The blank box.” When asked why, she said, “Because she saw it there.” Child 2 thought there was macaroni in the macaroni box and he did not know if anything was in the unmarked box. When asked where he thought Daisy would think the macaroni was, he answered with the blank box, “Because that’s where the macaroni’s are.” Child 3 thought there were macaroni in the macaroni box while the unmarked box was empty before opening them. She thought Daisy would look for the macaroni in the macaroni box, “because it [the box] says Macaroni N’ Cheese®.” Child 4 had similar answers except she thought the unmarked box was empty.

In, the second experiment, I used a Bee Movie® DVD case and foam animal stickers. This experiment was based on an experiment conducted by Diane Louise Szarkiwicz (1999).  I asked Child 1 what she thought was inside the DVD case and she answered, “Bee Movie®.” I then opened it and showed her that there were foam animal stickers inside. I closed it back up and asked her to point to the picture of what she thought was inside the DVD case before I opened it. She pointed to the picture of the stickers. Children 2, 3 and 4 all had the same results except that Child 4 pointed to the picture of the Bee Movie®.

During my investigation in false-belief tasks, I decided to look at socio-economic status (SES) and language skills. I had four children total in my study; specifically, two from low-SES parents and two from high-SES parents. One thing I observed during the study was not only how the children responded to my questions for correctness, but also how the children spoke to me. I noticed that the low-SES children had more problems speaking clearly, focusing, and used short, choppy sentences or one-word answers. Comparatively, the high-SES children spoke very clearly and used full sentences. When I spoke earlier of Shatz’s et al. (2003) study, I focused on PR Spanish speaking children. In that study, she found that PR Spanish speakers’ and English speakers’ responses were higher when the parents were of higher SES. This shows that SES has a larger influence on performance than does language; however, I am not discrediting the fact that language does play a role. In my study, I noticed that the children from low-SES families did not perform as well on the false-belief tasks (especially the five year old male) than the children from high-SES families. One reason could be that, because high-SES children speak better, they seem to grasp and understand the tasks more easily. The children from low-SES did not seem to grasp the tasks very well.

As a result of my study, I found that children from low-SES families do more poorly on false-belief tasks than children from high-SES families, regardless of age.

References

Shatz, M., Diesendruck, G., Martinez-Beck, I., & Akar, D. (2003). The influence of language and socioeconomic status on children’s understanding of false belief. Developmental Psychology, 39(4), 717-729.

Szarkowicz, D.L. (1999). Young children’s false belief understanding during play. The Journal of Genetic Psychology, 160(2), 243-255.

Tardif, T., Wellman, H.M., & Cheung, K.M. (2004). False belief understanding in Cantonese-speaking children. Journal of Child Language, 31, 779-800.