Impact of Teacher's Mental State Talk on Young Children's Theory of Mind: A Quasi-Experiment Study

Jianfen Wu; Minmin Liu; Wenqi Lin

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.668883

Impact of Teacher's Mental State Talk on Young Children's Theory of Mind: A Quasi-Experiment Study

Front Psychol. 2021 Mar 26:12:668883. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.668883. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Jianfen Wu¹, Minmin Liu², Wenqi Lin¹

Affiliations

¹ School of Education, Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou, China.
² Hangzhou Qiantang Jiangchao Kindergarten, Hangzhou, China.

Abstract

This study investigated the relationship between teachers' mental state talk and young children's theory of mind with a quasi-experiment. In total, 56 young children were assigned to the experiment group (mean_age = 41 months, SD = 2.47, 46% girls) and the control group (mean_age = 40.68 months, SD = 2.23, 43% girls). The experiment group was engaged in a 12-week intervention program with mental state talk in storytelling, casual conversations, and role-playing games, whereas the control group received no interventions. All the children were tested with three theory of mind (ToM) tasks before and after the intervention. The results indicated that the experimental group had a significant improvement in the ToM scores, whereas the control group showed no significant change. The educational implications of these findings are discussed.

Keywords: mental state talk; quasi-experiment; teacher-child interaction; theory of mind; young children.