A. Abu-akel et Al. Bailey, Indexical and symbolic referencing: what role do they play in children's success on theory of mind tasks?, COGNITION, 80(3), 2001, pp. 263-281
Numerous measures have been employed in the last 17 years to assess theory
of mind (ToM). The literature reports marked variability in the age at whic
h children succeed on these measures, To account for this variability, rese
archers have provided explanations ranging from cognitive shifts and voids
to the inability to understand the language of the tasks or to social/pragm
atic considerations, all of which tell us little if anything about the inte
rnal mechanism underlying ToM. The main purpose of this paper is to provide
a comprehensive theoretical account of children's success and the discrepa
ncies found across different ToM tasks. We test the hypothesis that childre
n's understanding of ToM is sensitive to the basic elements of language, th
at is, to whether the language is indexical or symbolic. Support for this a
ccount was found in the analysis of selected test protocols in four publish
ed studies of ToM, and new data collected from 53 children (4-6 years) whic
h showed that a higher percentage of children succeeded on tasks with a hig
h ratio of indexical to symbolic references than on tasks with a high ratio
of symbolic to indexical references. There was also a main effect of age w
ith older children succeeding at higher rates on both tasks than younger ch
ildren. Our findings suggest that indexical representation can afford ToM u
nderstanding in 4-year-olds, but is not sufficient for a more mature ToM. T
he latter requires symbolic representation that was demonstrated by the maj
ority of 5-6-year-olds. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.