ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on young children’s growing awareness, and understanding, of their own and other people’s minds. Many of the ideas introduced in earlier chapters have a fundamental relationship to this understanding. Cognitive self-regulation, for example, is part of a bigger picture which also includes social-and emotional self-regulation, looked at in Chapter 3. Children’s understanding of other people’s minds develops as part of their interactions with others in a social world. As Astington suggests:
The understanding of minds that children acquire in the preschool years underlies their social interactions with family and friends and provides the foundation for their cognitive activities in school. School and family, cognition and affect, work and love – these remain of fundamental importance throughout our lives. It all begins with the child’s discovery of the mind.
