Do complement clauses really support false-belief reasoning? A longitudinal study with English-speaking 2- to 3-year-olds
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Do complement clauses really support false-belief reasoning? A longitudinal study with English-speaking 2- to 3-year-olds. / Boeg Thomsen, Ditte; Theakston, Anna; Kandemirci, Birsu; Brandt, Silke.
In: Developmental Psychology, Vol. 57, No. 8, 08.2021, p. 1210-1227.Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Do complement clauses really support false-belief reasoning? A longitudinal study with English-speaking 2- to 3-year-olds
AU - Boeg Thomsen, Ditte
AU - Theakston, Anna
AU - Kandemirci, Birsu
AU - Brandt, Silke
PY - 2021/8
Y1 - 2021/8
N2 - To examine whether children’s acquisition of perspective-marking language supports development in their ability to reason about mental states, we conducted a longitudinal study testing whether proficiency with complement clauses around age 3 explained variance in false-belief reasoning 6 months later. Forty-five English-speaking 2- and 3-year-olds (23 female, Time 1 age range = 33–41 months) from middle-class families in the North-West of England took part in the study, which addresses a series of uncertainties in previous studies. We avoided the confound of using complement clauses in the false-belief tests, assessed complement-clause proficiency with a new comprehensive test designed to capture gradual development, and controlled for individual differences in executive functioning that could affect both linguistic and sociocognitive performance. Further, we aimed to disentangle the influence of two aspects of complement-clause acquisition: proficiency with the perspective-marking syntactic structure itself and understanding of the specific mental verbs used in this syntactic structure. To investigate direction of causality, we also tested whether early false-belief reasoning predicted later complement-clauseproficiency. The results provide strong support for the hypothesis that complement-clause acquisition promotes development in false-belief reasoning. Proficiency with the general structure of complement-clause constructions and understanding of the specific mental verbs “think” and “know” in third-person complements at Time 1 both contributed uniquely to predicting false-belief performance at Time 2. However, false-belief performance at Time 1 also contributed uniquely to predicting complement-clause proficiency at Time 2. Together, these results indicate a bidirectional relationship between linguistic and sociocognitive development.
AB - To examine whether children’s acquisition of perspective-marking language supports development in their ability to reason about mental states, we conducted a longitudinal study testing whether proficiency with complement clauses around age 3 explained variance in false-belief reasoning 6 months later. Forty-five English-speaking 2- and 3-year-olds (23 female, Time 1 age range = 33–41 months) from middle-class families in the North-West of England took part in the study, which addresses a series of uncertainties in previous studies. We avoided the confound of using complement clauses in the false-belief tests, assessed complement-clause proficiency with a new comprehensive test designed to capture gradual development, and controlled for individual differences in executive functioning that could affect both linguistic and sociocognitive performance. Further, we aimed to disentangle the influence of two aspects of complement-clause acquisition: proficiency with the perspective-marking syntactic structure itself and understanding of the specific mental verbs used in this syntactic structure. To investigate direction of causality, we also tested whether early false-belief reasoning predicted later complement-clauseproficiency. The results provide strong support for the hypothesis that complement-clause acquisition promotes development in false-belief reasoning. Proficiency with the general structure of complement-clause constructions and understanding of the specific mental verbs “think” and “know” in third-person complements at Time 1 both contributed uniquely to predicting false-belief performance at Time 2. However, false-belief performance at Time 1 also contributed uniquely to predicting complement-clause proficiency at Time 2. Together, these results indicate a bidirectional relationship between linguistic and sociocognitive development.
KW - Faculty of Humanities
KW - complement clauses
KW - false belief
KW - language acquisition
KW - mental verbs
KW - social cognition
U2 - 10.1037/dev0001012
DO - 10.1037/dev0001012
M3 - Journal article
C2 - 34591566
VL - 57
SP - 1210
EP - 1227
JO - Developmental Psychology
JF - Developmental Psychology
SN - 0012-1649
IS - 8
ER -
ID: 263077778