ABSTRACT
For the past 2 decades, children’s theory of mind has been a lively area of research in developmental cognitive science, investigating children’s ability to interpret human behavior within a mentalistic explanatory framework. Initially, in the 1980s, research focused on demonstrating normative changes in preschool children’s understanding of mental states, particularly as seen in their performance on experimental false-belief tasks. In the 1990s a new focus developed, investigating individual differences in theory-of-mind development, and the antecedents, correlates, and sequelae of this development. This work broadened the scope of the research, extending the age range downwards in to infancy and upwards into the school years, and expanding the field into areas such as children’s emotion understanding, pretend abilities, narrative skills, and moral reasoning. Findings from these more recent investigations have shown that there is a strong relation between theory of mind and language in development. The nature and import of this relationship is currently a topic of vigorous debate (see Astington & Baird, 2005-b).
