Theory of mind, emotion understanding, language, and family background: Individual differences and interrelations

Individual differences in young children's social cognition were examined i n 128 urban preschoolers from a wide range of backgrounds. Comprehensive as sessments were made of children's false-belief understanding, emotion under standing, language abilities, and family background information was collect ed via parent interview. Individual differences in children's understanding of false-belief and emotion were associated with differences in language a bility and with certain aspects of family background, in particular, parent al occupational class and mothers' education. The number of siblings that c hildren had did not relate to their social cognition. Individual difference s in false-belief and emotion understanding were correlated, but these doma ins did not contribute to each other independently of age, language ability ,and family background. In fact, variance in family background only contrib uted uniquely to false-belief understanding. The results suggest that famil y background has a significant impact on the development of theory of mind. The findings also suggest that understanding of false-belief and understan ding of emotion may be distinct aspects of social cognition in young childr en.