Abstract
It is widely recognised that possessing a theory of mind is a cornerstone of human social interaction. While theory of mind has been extensively researched over the past three decades, it was not until much more recently that researchers began to consider deontic reasoning (reasoning about social rules and regulations) as another critical part of social understanding. Research has not comprehensively investigated the relationship between theory of mind and deontic reasoning development in young children. Likewise, research has not yet focused on the influence of parental self-construal (i.e., how the parent views themselves in relation to others) on child theory of mind development, and how this relationship may be mediated by parental language use.
Our sample comprised 55 children aged between 3 and 7 years (M= 5.2 years) and their primary caregiver, with each parent-child dyad participating in either one or two experimental sessions consisting of six theory of mind and seven deontic reasoning tasks. Parents completed a cultural self-construal questionnaire, an autonomy-relatedness questionnaire, and a parenting goals questionnaire. Parent and child language use was assessed through the completion of a picture description task.
The results suggested that there is no clear distinction between theory of mind and deontic reasoning tasks, and that deontic reasoning may be a part of the broader theory of mind construct. Results also demonstrated that parents with more interdependent self-construals had children who performed better on the false belief tasks. Lastly, results indicated that parents who were more interdependent had children who, on average, had an increase in theory of mind ability due to the parental tendency to use more cognitive language. These findings illustrate the importance of socio-cultural factors in child social understanding.