title: I can talk you into it: theory of mind and persuasion behavior in young children.
abstract: We investigated links between persuasive behavior and theory of mind (ToM) understanding using a novel naturalistic peer persuasion task in which children were invited to convince an interactive puppet to eat raw broccoli or brush his teeth. Sixty-three 3- to 8-year-olds (M age = 6 years, 6 months) took part in the persuasion task and were also given a battery of first-order and advanced false belief tests. As predicted, the number of independent persuasive arguments children produced was significantly associated with false belief scores, even after controlling for age and verbal ability.
authors.affiliation: Slaughter, School of Psychology, University of Queensland, Brisbane, 4072 Australia. vps@psy.uq.edu.au
authors.forename: Virginia
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Slaughter
authors.forename: Candida C
authors.initials: CC
authors.lastname: Peterson
authors.forename: Chris
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Moore
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D002652:Child Behavior; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005247:Feeding Behavior; D005260:Female; D006126:Group Processes; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009042:Motivation; D010565:Persuasive Communication; D056345:Theory of Mind / Q000502:physiology*; D014705:Verbal Behavior