Mindful storytellers: Emerging pragmatics and theory of mind development

Emerging pragmatic language skills involve social, cognitive and linguistic abilities, including children’s awareness of the conversational partner’s mental states. The present study investigated the relation between children’s theory of mind (ToM) and features of pragmatic language skills assessed...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:First language Vol. 33; no. 1; pp. 20 - 46
Main Author: Fernandez, Camila
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: London, England SAGE Publications 01.02.2013
Subjects:
Children
Cognitive Ability
Cognitive Processes
Colombia
Communicative Competence
Communicative Competence (Languages)
Conversation
Correlation
Elementary School Students
Foreign Countries
Grade 1
Kolmogorov Smirnov Two Sample Test
Language Skills
Narration
Narratives
Native Language Acquisition
Picture Books
Pragmatics
Predictor Variables
Preschool Children
Receptive Language
Regression (Statistics)
Scores
Social Cognition
Social Environment
Spanish Speaking
Standardized Tests
Statistical Analysis
Task Analysis
Theory of Mind
Colombia
theory of mind
pragmatics
narrative
discourse
social-cognitive development
ISSN:0142-7237, 1740-2344
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Emerging pragmatic language skills involve social, cognitive and linguistic abilities, including children’s awareness of the conversational partner’s mental states. The present study investigated the relation between children’s theory of mind (ToM) and features of pragmatic language skills assessed through narrative discourse. One hundred and fifteen Spanish-speaking children attending preschool and first grade (57 girls, 58 boys) participated. Children completed a standardized measure of receptive language, narrated a wordless picture book and completed first- and second-order ToM tasks. ToM was significantly related to various pragmatic language features. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that second-order ToM scores were a significant predictor of pragmatic language skills. Findings suggest that children’s communicative competence in social contexts, to some extent, requires the development of higher-order social-cognitive reasoning.
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ISSN:0142-7237
1740-2344
DOI:10.1177/0142723711422633