Young Children's 'Theory Of Mind' Linked To Subsequent Metacognitive Development In Adolescence

A new study in the journal Mind, Brain, and Education detects a systematic link between children’s “theory of mind” as assessed in kindergarten and their metacognitive knowledge in elementary school.

Wolfgang Schneider, Ph.D., of the University of Wurzburg examined 174 children who were either three or four years of age at the beginning of the study in order to investigate the relationship between early ToM and subsequent metacognitive development. Children were tested at four measurement points, separated by a testing interval of approximately half a year.

Language abilities assessed at the ages of three or four years made significant contributions to the prediction of metamemory scores at the age of five. ToM facilitated the acquisition of metacognitive knowledge. Early ToM competencies also affected the acquisition of metacognitive vocabulary, which in turn had an impact on developmental changes in metacognitive knowledge.

ToM development is characterized by a growing insight into inferential and interpretive mental processes. Declarative metacognitive knowledge is usually scarce in young elementary children but increases considerably over the school years, predicting academic performance.

“An important reason to study metacognitive monitoring processes is because monitoring is supposed to play a central role in directing how people study,” Schneider notes. “Our research affects issues of cognitive intellectual development and can be used to develop training programs, particularly for young children, to ensure adequate metacognitive processing in educational contexts.”