PSYCHOLOGY MASTER'S THESIS ABSTRACT

Lara Litvinov
MA-Research
August 1998

Taking the Listener’s Perspective: Do Children Modify Their Language According to Their Theories of Mind?

    Children develop a theory of mind, which is a foundational understanding of mental states.  This understanding relates to perspective-taking in that children learn that someone else may have different knowledge from them.  Linguistic studies have shown that children modify and clarify their language according to their estimates of a listener’s knowledge. 

    This study investigated the association between children’s level of sophistication of theory of mind and their use of audience-sensitive language.  Three to six year old children performed two false belief tasks to measure theory of mind and one narrative task, which was taped, transcribed and coded for language.  Language was coded for clarity of referents and specific linguistic devices that signal new information.  Regression analyses supported the predicted hypothesis that theory of mind was significantly predictive of children’s use of audience-sensitive language, specifically in clarity of referents.

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