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Tidigare studier har påvisat att språkliga förmågor har ett nära samband med Theory of Mind (ToM). På senare tid har studier med hjälp av ögonrörelseteknik kunnat undersöka ToMförmåga implicit och fynden tyder på att barn redan i tvåårsåldern verkar ha en välutvecklad implicit ToM-förmåga. Resultaten från en av dessa studier har funnit att språkutvecklingen kan spela en avgörande roll i tillägnandet av ToM och tyder på att det kan finnas ett orsakssamband mellan språk och ToM. En viktig aspekt för att närmare förstå ToMutvecklingen är att undersöka vilken betydelse den språkliga förmågan har i tillägnandet av ToM. Det är fortfarande oklart om specifika delar av språket har mer betydelse för ToMutvecklingen än andra och hur sambandet mellan språkliga förmågor och ToM ser ut. Syftet med föreliggande studie var att undersöka hur ToM-förmåga och False Beliefförståelse förhåller sig till språkliga förmågor hos typiskt utvecklade barn i treårsåldern samt om dessa förmågor påverkas av barnens demografiska faktorer. Studien inkluderade sammanlagt 21 treåringar. Den språkliga förmågan undersöktes med mått på impressiv och expressiv grammatik samt med mått på expressivt ordförråd, som en del av den semantiska förmågan. För att undersöka ToM-förmågan som helhet användes mått på olika delförmågor av ToM. Vidare undersöktes False Belief-förståelse explicit, med klassiska FB-uppgifter, och implicit, med hjälp av ögonrörelseteknik.Studiens resultat påvisar att språkliga förmågor och ToM-förmåga har ett mycket nära samband, och att den semantiska förmågan är den del av språkförmågan som har den enskilt starkaste påverkan på ToM-förmågan. Resultaten visar även att den impressiva grammatiska förmågan är mer betydande specifikt för FB-förståelse än för ToM-förmågan som helhet. Ingen påverkan på språklig förmåga, ToM-förmåga och FB-förståelse hittades vad gäller barnens demografiska faktorer. Resultaten av det implicita FB-testet visar att majoriteten av de deltagande barnen inte har förstått vad testet går ut på och därför kan inga slutsatser dras vad gäller barnens implicita FB-förståelse. Detta resultat motsäger den tidigare forskningen med yngre barn. Många frågetecken kvarstår kring implicita test, vilket visar på vikten av mer forskning inom området. I den aktuella studien diskuteras även komplexiteten i förhållandet mellan språkliga förmågor och ToM. / Previous studies have shown that linguistic abilities are closely linked with Theory of Mind (ToM). Recently, studies using eyetracking technology have been able to investigate ToM understanding with implicit measures. The findings suggest that children as young as two years old appear to have a well-developed implicit ToM understanding. Results from one of these studies have found that language development could play a crucial role in the acquisition of ToM, suggesting that there may be a causal link between language and ToM. An important aspect to further understand ToM development is to investigate the impact of language in the acquisition of ToM understanding. It remains unclear whether specific aspects of language are more relevant to ToM development than others and how language abilities and ToM are interconnected. The aim of the present study was to investigate how ToM ability and False Belief understanding relates to linguistic abilities of typically developing three-year-olds and if childrens´ demographic factors affect these abilities. The study included a total of 21 children.  Language competence was assessed with measures of reception and production of syntax and a measure of vocabulary production, as part of the semantic ability. In order to investigate ToM ability, measures of different types of mental-state understandings were included. False Belief understanding was assessed with explicit measures, using standard FB tasks, and with implicit measures, using eyetracking technology. The results obtained in the present study confirm that linguistic abilities and ToM ability are strongly related, and that semantic ability is the part of language that has the strongest influence on ToM understanding. The results also indicate that receptive syntax is more important to specifically FB understanding, than to ToM ability in general. The childrens´ demographic factors were not found to affect their language ability, ToM ability or FB understanding. Regarding children's implicit FB understanding the results of the implicit measures reveal that the majority of the participating children did not understand the purpose of the test and therefore no conclusions of their implicit understanding could be drawn. This finding contradicts previous research including younger children. Questions remain concerning implicit measures, indicating the importance of further research in this field. The present study also discusses the complexity of the relationship between linguistic abilities and ToM.

Research on theory of mind (ToM) has been dominated by the traditional False Belief tasks; however, recent work has established a developmental sequence for children’s mental-state understanding. Wellman and Liu (2004) formulated a ToM scale that tests four additional aspects of ToM abilities in the visual realm: Diverse Desires, Diverse Beliefs, Knowledge Access, and Real-Apparent Emotions. Our study extended the scale to include five parallel tasks assessing ToM in the auditory realm. Sixty-six typically developing preschoolers (30 female) between the ages of 3- and 5-years-old were tested using 10 ToM tasks (5 visual, 5 auditory). A 3(age) x 2(modality) x 2(gender) repeated measures ANOVA yielded significant effects for age and gender, where 4- and 5-year-olds demonstrated greater mental-state understanding than 3-year-olds and girls passed more tasks than boys. There was no effect of modality nor did any interactions emerge. Like the visual tasks in the theory-of-mind scale, the auditory tasks form a scalable set, with Diverse Desires and Diverse Beliefs occurring earlier in the scale than Knowledge Access, False Belief, and Real-Apparent Emotions. Our new scale provides researchers with five novel tasks to measure the progression of theory-of-mind development in the auditory realm and may be extended to assess preschoolers, such as children with visual impairments and children with autism spectrum disorder, who have shown delays in mental-state understanding when tested using predominantly visual tasks

This thesis examines the effects of linguistic input on the development of children’s epistemic concepts. It draws upon two fundamental questions in the field of cognitive development: (a) whether distinctions between automatic and controlled forms of cognitive processing are indicative of underlying conceptual differences, and (b) whether language is critical to the process of concept development. To establish the background of the current research, a summary of how these theoretical questions have been addressed in other fields of cognitive psychology is first provided (Chapter 1). These questions are then re- examined within the specific domain of epistemic concept development (Chapter 2). Changes in false-belief processing that occur between infancy and the early preschool years are discussed in relation to two competing theories of false-belief development. A framework to explain how language promotes children’s transition between automatic and controlled forms of processing is then provided. It is suggested that language facilitates change by both reducing the cognitive demands associated with controlled response tasks as well as assisting with the formation of robust epistemic representations. An empirical study that was designed to examine the effects of epistemic language (i.e., verbs and syntax) on children’s automatic and controlled processing of belief is then described (Chapters 3 to 5). Eighty-four children (Mage = 3;5 years), who initially failed elicited measures of false-belief, were trained with visual contexts of true- and false-belief. The critical manipulation across three conditions was the linguistic input presented in conjunction with these contexts. Children heard narrations that contained either (a) the description of an agent’s actions without an epistemic verb, (b) a familiar epistemic verb (thinks) across both contexts, or (c) the familiar epistemic verb in contexts of true-belief and a novel epistemic verb (gorps) in contexts of false-belief. Results demonstrated a significant advantage for children who were trained with epistemic verbs on spontaneous measures of false-belief (i.e., anticipatory gaze). Significant effects of epistemic verb exposure were also demonstrated in novel contexts of belief induction. Implications of these findings are discussed in relation to theories that make distinct predictions about the role of language in epistemic concept development (Chapter 6).

In the current study, children’s understanding of false belief, intention, and their ability to distinguish the appearance of a character from its reality was investigated. Seventy-two three to five years olds were recruited from several preschools in the Silicon Valley in California. During the experiment, children were shown an animated movie in a computer and asked the false belief, intention, and appearance-reality distinction questions. Following the animated movie, children were also asked if they understand 10 mental words that depicted the human mind, such as think, want, believe, etc. The relationship between the children’s knowledge of the human mind and the mental words they understood was explored. Results of the current study revealed that children who were four and half to five performed better than children three and half to four on false belief tasks. Children’s performance on intention and appearance-reality distinction questions did not differ significantly across age. However, girls’ performance was superior to boys’ performance on intention questions. Similarly, girls’ knowledge of overall naïve psychology was also superior to that of boys. Moreover, the order of the naïve psychology concepts that children passed in current study was from intention to appearance-reality distinction and then false belief. Finally, the regression analysis of the data revealed that the mental word vocabulary children processed was closely related to naïve psychology development. More specifically, the number of total mental words that were reported by children or assessed by contextual questions was a significant predictor of naïve psychology knowledge.

Studien beskriver aktuell forskning kring hur yngre barn tänker om andra människors tankar och känslor utifrån olika teoretiska perspektiv. Vidare provas ett test som så tidigt som möjligt under barns utveckling möjligen kan belysa förskolebarns förmåga att sätta sig in i någon annans tankar, perspektiv. Inom autismforskningen har begreppet theory of mind använts för att belysa den kognitiva förmåga som krävs för att en person ska kunna sätta sig in i någon annans tankar. Från flera håll har begreppet ifrågasatts eftersom det krävs flera kognitiva komponenter såsom minne och verbal förmåga för att lösa denna typ av uppgifter. Följande studie har genomförts för att undersöka ett test som så renodlat som möjligt försöker belysa förmågan att förstå hur någon annan tänker. Elva barn som utretts för autismspektrumfrågeställning och fått diagnosen autism har fått genomföra testet ”Kicki och Katten” och jämförts med tio typiskt utvecklade barn matchade på mental ålder. Resultatet visar att det inte finns någon skillnad mellan barnen med autism och de typiskt utvecklade barnen och att barn med en mental ålder under fyra år, i båda grupperna, inte klarar av testet Kicki och Katten. Testet Kicki och Katten fungerar inte för att bedöma theory of mind hos yngre barn än fyra år.

We examined the spatiotemporal dynamics underlying the processing of a false belief task using magnetoencephalography (MEG). Twenty adults performed a false belief task adapted for MEG. Regions of interest were selected based on source analyses on the contrast between false and true belief, and MEG source time-course reconstructions were generated and analyzed to determine the temporal architecture of neural activations specific to false belief reasoning. We found frontal, temporal and parietal regions to activate during false belief processing, confirming prior findings. We also extend previous findings by adding information about the temporal profile of neural activity during theory of mind processing, an area lacking in the literature. We found that increased frontal activity began at 100 ms bilaterally, followed by parietal regions from 200 to 330 ms and temporal regions at 350 ms, at which point frontal activity became lateralized to the right hemisphere.

We examined the spatiotemporal dynamics underlying the processing of a false belief task using magnetoencephalography (MEG). Twenty adults performed a false belief task adapted for MEG. Regions of interest were selected based on source analyses on the contrast between false and true belief, and MEG source time-course reconstructions were generated and analyzed to determine the temporal architecture of neural activations specific to false belief reasoning. We found frontal, temporal and parietal regions to activate during false belief processing, confirming prior findings. We also extend previous findings by adding information about the temporal profile of neural activity during theory of mind processing, an area lacking in the literature. We found that increased frontal activity began at 100 ms bilaterally, followed by parietal regions from 200 to 330 ms and temporal regions at 350 ms, at which point frontal activity became lateralized to the right hemisphere.