3- and 5-year-olds' development of mental states understanding : a preliminary analysis of their daily conversation.

Abstract

The developmental pattern of theory of mind in bilingual children was investigated. This study adopted the methodology done Dunn, Bretherton, and Munn (1987) by studying the utterances

and conversations that explicitly contained reference to mental state words. In this study, 15 children of age 3 and 17 children of age 5 were observed during their free play time. The

children’s speeches were recorded and transcribed. It was found that children of age 3 did have the ability to grasp basic mental state concepts of desires, but not complex mental state concepts of beliefs, when compared to children of age 5. There was no difference found in the functional

use of language in both groups.