THEORY OF MIND DEVELOPMENT AND SOCIAL UNDERSTANDING

A cross-sectional, correlational study of 30 children, 3 to 5 years ol d, investigated relations between their theory of mind development and social interaction, controlling for age and general language ability. Children's overall performance on 4 standard false belief tasks was a ssociated with their production of joint proposals and explicit role a ssignments during a 10 minute session of pretend play. False belief ta sk performance was not associated with the child's total amount of pre tend play or with a measure of empathic concern. We discuss the signif icance of an association between a laboratory measure of theory of min d development and children's behaviour observed in a naturalistic sett ing. We argue that the description and explanation of children's theor y of mind and social understanding is best pursued through the combine d efforts of experimenters and ethologists.