Children's Theories of Mind: Mental States and Social Understanding
Children's Theories of Mind: Mental States and Social Understanding
Synopsis
Excerpt
Recent work on children's theories of mind has refreshed the study of the mental life of the child. The new research acknowledges the child's conceptions of intention and belief, as well intention and belief themselves, and considers the explanations they provide for the developing abilities of the child. Effects of the child's theory of mind spread across cognitive, language, and social development. The topic, therefore, holds the promise of bringing a unifying influence to developmental psychology. This book on the child's theory of mind began its life as a study group that met for several days in March, 1988 at Yale University. Sponsorship by the Society for Research in Child Development and the Foundation for Child Development was critical to the success of the project. It allowed the group to be international in composition; a necessity when laboratories in Canada, the United States, England, and Europe are all engaged in the research. It also permitted us to meet and talk before committing our thoughts irretrievably to paper. This procedure, we believe, was responsible for the new speculations on the acquisition of theories of mind that made their way into the contributions between the first discussions and the final drafts. We thank Judi Amsel and Debra Ruel at Lawrence Erlbaum Associates for their excellent supervision of the published result.