title: Promoting theory of mind during middle childhood: a training program.
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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Brain and Behavioral Sciences, University of Pavia, 27100 Pavia, Italy. Electronic address: slecce@unipv.it.
authors.forename: Serena
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Lecce
authors.affiliation: Department of Brain and Behavioral Sciences, University of Pavia, 27100 Pavia, Italy.
authors.forename: Federica
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Bianco
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3EB, UK.
authors.forename: Rory T
authors.initials: RT
authors.lastname: Devine
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3EB, UK.
authors.forename: Claire
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Hughes
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, University of Sussex, Brighton BN1 9QH, UK.
authors.forename: Robin
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Banerjee
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D056344:Executive Function; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011932:Reading; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D013060:Speech; D013663:Teaching / Q000379:methods; D056345:Theory of Mind
keywords: Conversational approach; Executive functions; Intervention; Maintenance; Middle childhood; Theory of mind