How effective are children in their social interaction: The role of theory of mind

Pages:406-410
Nandita babu and Subhasmita Panda (Department of Psychology, University of Delhi, Delhi)

How do we understand each other? As social beings, one of the most important tasks for people is to develop social and communicative skills in order to interact with other people. Almost always, in social worlds, we take into account and try to understand other people’s feelings, desires, beliefs, intentions and motivations based on our own “theory of mind”. Theory of mind enables us to explain and predict other people’s behavior and appropriately responds to them in relationships. It involves an understanding that people have mental states including thoughts, beliefs, and desires. Children’s knowledge about the mind is a foundational domain of social-cognitive development and by 4 to 5 years of age most children have acquired an understanding of mind. That is, children around this age are able to understand a person’s action in terms of that person’s desires, thoughts, beliefs and emotions. Developing a theory of mind is important because it enables children to interact appropriately with others. It enables children, as they grow, to acquire more complicated socio-cognitive skills such as perspective taking, collaboration, recursive thought. This ability allows to interpret the behaviors of others in everyday social interaction. Theory of mind understanding is intricately related to language. In this paper the importance of Theory of mind in children’s social interaction is being highlighted.