Lecce, Serena, Bianco, Federica, Devine, Rory T, Hughes, Claire and Banerjee, Robin (2014) Promoting theory of mind during middle childhood: a training program. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 126. pp. 52-67. ISSN 0022-0965

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Abstract

Evidence that conversations about the mind foster improvements in theory of mind (ToM) is growing, but their efficacy in typically developing school-aged children has yet to be demonstrated. To address this gap, we designed a conversation-based training program for 9- and 10-year-olds and measured its effectiveness by pre- and post-test comparisons of performance on age-appropriate ToM tasks for two groups (matched at pre-test for gender, age, socioeconomic background, verbal ability, reading comprehension, executive functions, and ToM) who were assigned to either the intervention condition (n=45) or an active control condition (n=46). The intervention group showed significantly greater gains in ToM than the control group; this contrast was stable over 2 months, and (in a subsample) the improvement in ToM was independent of any changes in executive functions. Implications for the role of conversations about the mind in children's mental state reasoning are discussed.

Item Type:	Article
Schools and Departments:	School of Psychology > Psychology
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion
Depositing User:	Lene Hyltoft
Date Deposited:	31 Jul 2015 12:43
Last Modified:	06 Aug 2019 11:06
URI:	http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/55894

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