Much is known about when children acquire an understanding of mental states, but few, if any, experiments identify social contexts in which children tend to use this capacity and dispositions that influence its usage. Social exclusion is a common situation that compels us to reconnect with new parties, which may crucially involve attending to those parties’ mental states. Across two studies, this line of inquiry was extended to typically developing preschoolers (Study 1) and young children with and without anxiety disorder (AD) (Study 2). Children played the virtual game of toss “Cyberball” ostensibly over the Internet with two peers who first played fair (inclusion), but eventually threw very few balls to the child (exclusion). Before and after Cyberball, children in both studies completed stories about peer-scenarios. For Study 1, 36 typically developing 5-year-olds were randomly assigned to regular exclusion (for no apparent reason) or accidental exclusion (due to an alleged computer malfunction). Compared to accidental exclusion, regular exclusion led children to portray story-characters more strongly as intentional agents (intentionality), with use of more mental state language (MSL), and more between-character affiliation in post-Cyberball stories. For Study 2, 20 clinically referred 4 to 8-year-olds with AD and 15 age- and gender-matched non-anxious controls completed stories before and after regular exclusion. While we replicated the post regular-exclusion increase of intentional and MSL portrayals of story-characters among non-anxious controls, anxious children exhibited a decline on both dimensions after regular exclusion. We conclude that exclusion typically induces young children to mentalize, enabling more effective reconnection with others. However, excessive anxiety may impair controlled mentalizing, which may, in turn, hamper effective reconnection with others after exclusion.

Understanding intentionality, i.e. coding the object directedness of agents towards objects, is a fundamental component of Theory of Mind abilities. Yet it is unclear how it is perceived and coded in different species. In this thesis, we present a series of comparative studies to explore human adults' and Capuchin monkeys' ability to infer intentional objects from actions. First we studied whether capuchin monkeys and adult humans infer a potential object from observing an object-directed action. With no direct information about the goal-object, neither species inferred the object from the action. However, when the object was revealed, the monkeys retrospectively encoded the directedness of the object-directed action; unexpectedly, in an adapted version of the task adult humans did not show a similar ability. We then adapted another paradigm, originally designed by Kovács et al (2010), to examine whether the two species implicitly register the intentional relation between an agent and an object. We manipulated an animated agent and the participants' belief about a ball's presence behind a hiding screen. We found no evidence showing that humans or monkeys coded object-directedness or belief. More importantly, we failed to replicate the original results from Kovács et al's study, and through a series of follow up studies, we questioned their conclusions regarding implicit ToM understanding. We suggested that, instead of implicit ToM, results like Kovacs et al's might be interpreted as driven by “sub-mentalizing” processes, as suggested by Heyes (2014). We conclude that so called ‘implicit ToM' may be based upon the computation of intentional relations between perceived agents and objects. But, these computations might present limitations, and some results attributed to implicit ToM may in fact reflect “sub-mentalizing” processes.

Comment les conventions sociales se développent-elles dans les jeux entre enfants de 3 à 7 ans ? L’objectif de cette recherche est de mieux comprendre la co-construction de significations à travers l’étude des détournements d’usages d’objets. Très peu d’études s’intéressent au développement des usages d’objets chez l’enfant après 3 ans au sein de situations sociales et communicatives. La présente thèse vise donc à combler ce vide et suppose que les compétences symboliques enfantines examinées via les usages d’objets se développent entre 3 et 7 ans.Trois études ont été réalisées avec des dyades d’enfants de 3, 4, 5 et 7 ans. Les mêmes objets sont présentés dans chaque étude. La première étude est un jeu libre, sans contrainte. La deuxième invite les enfants à faire de l’humour avec les objets. La troisième est la plus contraignante du point de vue des détournements d’usages d’objets. Les enfants doivent prétendre préparer un repas n’ayant que des objets inadéquats pour le faire. Dans le jeu libre, les principaux résultats montrent que les enfants de 3 ans sont déjà très compétents pour détourner les objets. En revanche, la création d’usages détournés humoristiques est moins élaborée à 3 et 4 ans qu’à 7 ans. Enfin, dans le jeu du repas, les enfants de 3, 4 et 5 ans développent des significations moins complexes que les enfants de 7 ans. Ainsi, plus le jeu est contraint, plus les enfants de 3, 4 et 5 ans ont des difficultés à détourner et s’accorder sur de nouvelles fonctions pour les objets. Ces résultats apportent un regard nouveau sur les relations entre conventions sociales, jeu entre pairs, usages d’objets et théorie de l’esprit dans le champ de la psychologie du développement. / How do social conventions develop in children’s play between the ages of 3 and 7 years? The aim of the present research was to improve current understanding of the co-construction of meanings by investigating symbolic uses of objects. Very few studies have focused on the use of objects in social and communicative situations among children beyond the age of 3 years. The purpose of the current thesis was thus to fill this gap, based on the assumption that children's symbolic skills, examined here via the use of objects, develop between the ages of 3 and 7. Three studies were conducted with dyads of 3-, 4-, 5- and 7-year-old children. The same objects were used in each study. The first study consisted of free, unrestricted play. In the second one, the children were invited to play in a humoristic way with objects. The third one was the most constraining in terms of symbolic uses of objects, as the children had to pretend that they were preparing a meal, but were not given the appropriate objects. Results for the unrestricted play study, showed that the 3-year-olds were already very skilled at using objects in a symbolic way. However, the creation of humoristic symbolic uses was less elaborated in the 3- and 4-year-olds than in the 7-year-olds. Finally, for the pretend meal, the 3-, 4- and 5-year-olds developed less complex meanings than the 7-year-olds. Thus, the greater the level of constraint, the greater the difficulty for the 3-, 4- and 5-year-olds in using objects in a symbolic way, and the greater the difficulty in agreeing on new functions for such objects. These results shed new light on the relationship between social conventions, children’s play, object uses and theory of mind in the field of developmental psychology.

This study aimed to explore the underlying basis of the communication difficulties in children (between 5.0 and 7.11 years) with high functioning pervasive developmental disorder (HFPDD) (n=26), compared to children with specific language impairment (SLI) (n=26), and children with no history of developmental difficulty (NDD) (n=26). The study looked at: whether different profiles could be obtained for the groups on comprehensive batteries of communication, cognitive processing and theory of mind; which areas measured were best correlated; and which measures best differentiated the groups. Comprehensive communication and theory of mind batteries were devised and conducted. Cognitive processing was measured using the Cognitive Assessment System (CAS) (Naglieri and Das, 1997). Data was analysed using descriptive statistics, analysis of variance, the Kruskal-Wallis test, Bonferroni t tests, frequency distributions, Pearson correlation coefficients and discriminant function analyses. Kappa coefficients and analysis of variance measures were carried out on 23% of the rated data in order to establish inter-rater agreement and acceptable levels of agreement were reached. On the communication assessment, the HFPDD group experienced the most difficulty on the measures of understanding abstract vocabulary, understanding conversation, pronoun alternation, higher level semantics, narrative ability and pragmatic ability. In contrast, the SLI group experienced the most difficulty on the measures of expressive grammar and narrative clarity. On the cognitive processing assessment, the HFPDD group experienced marked difficulty in the areas of planning and attention, while the SLI group experienced significant difficulty in the areas of successive processing and less marked but still significant difficulty in the area of planning. Within the HFPDD group, a group with simultaneous processing markedly stronger than successive processing, a group with successive processing markedly stronger than simultaneous processing, and a group with simultaneous and successive processing occurring at a similar level, were identified. The HFPDD group experienced significant difficulty on all the measures of theory of mind, although a limited number of HFPDD subjects did not experience difficulty. The SLI group experienced significant difficulty on the two theory of mind measures that were more verbally loaded. Strong correlations were found between receptive language, expressive semantics, narrative ability, pragmatic ability, planning, attention and theory of mind; and between expressive grammar and successive processing. Pragmatic ability, narrative ability, planning, and certain of the theory of mind measures best appeared to discriminate the groups. A combined model of language, cognitive and theory of mind processing is proposed to explain the differences between the HFPDD and SLI groups.

Submitted by Filipe dos Santos (fsantos@pucsp.br) on 2018-12-14T11:43:54Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Caroline Campos Rodrigues da Silva.pdf: 669146 bytes, checksum: 0a3431282bf9917df655117ba62cb734 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-12-14T11:43:54Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Caroline Campos Rodrigues da Silva.pdf: 669146 bytes, checksum: 0a3431282bf9917df655117ba62cb734 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-11-26 / Conselho Nacional de Pesquisa e Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico - CNPq / The ability to infer what other people think and to identify the intentionality of actions is defined as theory of mind, which is a useful cognitive ability to the adaptation within the social world, since it is proper from the human being to regulate a considerable part of their actions based on the knowledge about the intentions of others This study aims to review articles about the emergence and development of the theory of mind in infants. The search was was conducted in Science Direct, Scielo and PsycNet, obtained 399 results, which 46 articles were analyzed regarding to the development of theory of mind before expressive language. The analysis led to five thematic categories: (a) theoretical articles about the development and emergence of theory of mind; (b) articles regarding the development of false belief; (c) implications of the kind of parental care to the development of theory of mind; (d) studies about intentional communication and (e) studies about the comprehension of mental states. It was possible to ascertain that a great part of these researches were about children between 13 and 18 months. The results also suggest lack of consensus among researchers regarding to the moment when the theory of mind emerges or when it actually becomes a theory / A habilidade de inferir o que outras pessoas estão pensando e identificar a intencionalidade de ações é denominada teoria da mente, uma habilidade cognitiva útil para adaptação ao mundo social uma vez que é próprio do ser humano regular uma parte considerável de suas ações tendo como base os conhecimentos adquiridos acerca das intenções dos outros. Foi objetivo desta pesquisa realizar uma revisão de literatura a respeito da emergência e do desenvolvimento da teoria da mente em bebês. A busca foi realizada nas bases Science Direct, Scielo e PsycNet e obteve 399 resultados, dos quais foram analisados 46 artigos referentes ao desenvolvimento da teoria da mente antes da linguagem expressiva. A análise levou à formação de cinco categorias temáticas: (a) artigos teóricos sobre o desenvolvimento e emergência da teoria da mente; (b) artigos a respeito do desenvolvimento da crença falsa; (c) implicações do tipo de cuidado parental no desenvolvimento da teoria da mente; (d) estudos sobre comunicação intencional e (e) estudos sobre compreensão de estados mentais. Foi possível verificar que grande parte dessas pesquisas foram realizadas com crianças entre 13 e 18 meses. Observou-se, também, ausência de consenso entre os pesquisadores a respeito de qual momento a teoria de mente emerge ou quando ela se torna, de fato, uma teoria

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-28T20:56:28Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Eliana Cristina Gallo Penna.pdf: 1169714 bytes, checksum: e8422e015d7aa978fbf384302d1e2d44 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-02-27 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / The manifestation of the Theory of Mind in autism is a singular issue, emphasized by the hypothesis that there are deficits in the ability of attributing mental states in autistic children, related to autism specific symptoms. This research is an experimental intervention, which aims to investigate the effects of a procedure, based on the ability of attributing mental states to others in autistic children. It is to guide mothers of autistic children to the use of children's stories telling based on the use of mental terms and explanations of mental states of desires, beliefs, intentions and emotions about the characters in order to foster the ability of understanding other people's mental states. Three children, ages 11 to 16, one boy and two girls students of regular schools from the state of Minas Gerais, participated of this research together with their mothers. The Theory of Mind was assessed in the pretest as well as the posttest, according to The Theory of Mind Scale. The intervention procedure lasted for six months. During this period, there were two group orientation plus fifteen individual ones. The individual orientations were held weekly in the children's homes, shortly after the children's stories telling. The stories, told by their mothers, were video recorded, transcribed and submitted to the SPAD - T software for treatment and categorization of terms of mental states attributing. The results showed that the language used for the mother, according to the guideline containing terms and explanations of mental states, was favoring the manifestation of the Theory of Mind for their children. It was observed in two children that there was a relationship between the mother's language and the performance of false belief tasks. It was observed an increase in the use of emotional terms in the children's speech, and in cognitive terms on the mother s lines. It is considered that the language is a predictor in attributing mental states to other people, also in autistic children. Children with better language skills can evoke mental terms, and are able to hit in the false belief tasks / A manifestação da teoria da mente no autismo é uma questão singular, marcada pela hipótese de que existem déficits na capacidade de atribuição de estados mentais em crianças autistas, relacionados com os sintomas específicos que constituem o autismo. A presente pesquisa é um estudo experimental de intervenção, cujo objetivo é investigar os efeitos de um procedimento, baseado em linguagem, sobre a habilidade de atribuição de estados mentais ao outro, em crianças com autismo. Trata-se de orientar as mães de filhos autistas para o uso de narrativas de histórias infantis, baseadas no uso de termos mentais e explicações dos estados mentais de desejos, crenças, intenções e emoções, dos personagens, com o propósito de favorecer a capacidade de compreensão de estados mentais do outro. Participaram três crianças e suas mães, com idades de 11 e 16 anos, um menino e duas meninas, que frequentavam escolas regulares do estado de Minas Gerais. A teoria da mente foi avaliada no pré-teste e no pós-teste, pela Escala de Teoria da Mente. O procedimento de intervenção teve seis meses de duração. Nesse período, foram realizadas duas orientações coletivas e quinze individuais. As orientações individuais foram realizadas semanalmente, nas casas das crianças, logo após as narrativas de histórias infantis. As narrativas de histórias, realizadas pelas mães, foram videogravadas, transcritas e submetidas ao software SPAD-T, para tratamento e categorização de termos de atribuição de estados mentais. Os resultados demonstraram que a linguagem adotada pelas mães a partir das orientações, contendo termos e explicações sobre os estados mentais, foi favorecedora na manifestação da teoria da mente de seus filhos. Houve uma relação entre a linguagem materna e o desempenho das tarefas de crença falsa, observada em duas crianças. Foi observado o aumento no uso de termos emocionais nas falas das crianças, e de termos cognitivos nas falas maternas. Considera-se que a linguagem é preditora na atribuição de estados mentais ao outro, também em crianças autistas. As crianças que possuem melhores habilidades linguísticas podem evocar termos mentais e obter acerto nas tarefas de crença falsa

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-28T20:56:49Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Rosimeire Aparecida Vicente Pellegrini.pdf: 2048927 bytes, checksum: ddfa2e715c0f9b209b1ae84b09b99575 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-03-02 / Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico / The skill development in understanding mental states wishes, intentions and beliefs has been studied by the name of Theory of Mind. It s at the early ages that children acquire the ability of understanding that other people have wishes, intentions and beliefs that can be different from theirs. The Theory of Mind is an important moment in the social cognitive development, because it allows us to explain and predict people s behavior, making interpersonal relationships easier. The objective of this research was to investigate how children attribute mental states of wishes, intentions and beliefs to stories characters and to analyse the given justifications in a way to verify the hypothesis of the relation between the language development and the theory of mind, focusing on the use of epistemic verbs (to know, to think, and to believe) and the ability to give coherent answers in the justifications of the theory of mind tasks. It was also the objective of this research to control the order effect in the application of the Scaling Tasks and to verify the relation to the age in mental states comprehension. 70 children in the age between 3 years old and 5 years and 11 months old from average and average high standard of living families who attended classes in a private school in São Caetano do Sul, a city in São Paulo took part of the study. A test of verbal level was done and seven Scaling Tasks were applied. The results showed that most of the children, when invited to justify their answers in the tasks of the theory of mind, reflected about their wrong answers and corrected themselves pointing out to the comprehension of the mental states. Regarding the variable order effect in the application of the Scale, it was noticed that some tasks which were considered more difficult by the literature were shown to be of easy comprehension to the participants of this research. It s important to emphasize that these results are preliminary and other studies involving a larger number of Brazilian kids are necessary to evaluate Scaling Tasks in the Theory of Mind. Regarding the difference in ages, the results agree with the literature, once the children tended to answer precociously to the tasks of wishes and tardily to the tasks of false belief. Another fact that also coincides with the former studies is the use of epistemic verbs by the children before the comprehension of mental verbs. These results support the hypothesis of a relation between the theory of mind and the language development / O desenvolvimento da habilidade de compreender estados mentais desejos, intenções e crenças tem sido estudado sob o nome de Teoria da Mente. É durante os primeiros anos de vida que as crianças adquirem essa habilidade de compreender que as outras pessoas possuem desejos, intenções, emoções e crenças, que podem ser diferentes das suas. A teoria da mente é marco importante no desenvolvimento sociocognitivo, pois permite explicar e predizer o comportamento dos outros, facilitando, assim, as relações interpessoais. O objetivo desta pesquisa é investigar como crianças fazem atribuições de estados mentais de desejos, intenções e crenças a personagens de histórias e analisar as justificativas dadas, de modo a verificar a hipótese de relação entre o desenvolvimento da linguagem e da teoria da mente, dando-se atenção específica ao uso de verbos epistêmicos (saber, achar, acreditar, pensar) e à capacidade de dar respostas coerentes nas justificativas das tarefas de teoria da mente. É também objetivo da pesquisa controlar o efeito de ordem na aplicação da Escala de Tarefas e verificar a relação com a idade na compreensão de estados mentais. Participaram do estudo 70 crianças com idade variando de 3 anos a 5 anos e 11 meses, provenientes de famílias de nível socioeconômico médio e médio alto, que frequentavam uma escola de educação infantil da rede particular de ensino, na cidade de São Caetano do Sul, na grande São Paulo. Foi feita uma prova de nível verbal e aplicadas as sete tarefas da escala. Os resultados mostram que as crianças, ao serem convidadas a justificarem suas respostas nas tarefas de teoria da mente, em sua grande maioria, refletem sobre suas respostas erradas e se autocorrigem, apontando para a compreensão dos estados mentais. Quanto à variável efeito de ordem na aplicação da Escala, foi constatado que algumas tarefas, consideradas pela literatura como sendo mais difíceis, mostraram-se de fácil compreensão para os participantes da pesquisa. Salienta-se que esses resultados são preliminares e outros estudos envolvendo um número maior de crianças brasileiras são necessários para avaliação da Escala de Tarefas de Teoria da Mente. Em relação à variável idade, os resultados concordam com a literatura, uma vez que as crianças tenderam a responder precocemente as tarefas de desejos e, tardiamente, as tarefas de crença falsa. Outro dado que também coincide com estudos anteriores é o uso de verbos epistêmicos, pelas crianças, antes mesmo da compreensão de estados mentais. Esses resultados amparam a hipótese de uma relação entre a teoria da mente e o desenvolvimento da linguagem

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-28T20:56:58Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Adriana Soares Freitas de Souza.pdf: 1665142 bytes, checksum: 305a6c3fa83ebb19631efa0d6aef9ff9 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-12-17 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Children s capacity to attribute mental states such as desires, intentions and beliefs to themselves and to others, named Theory of mind, is essential for successful social relationships. There is evidence that children s stories contribute to the development of the theory of mind. The present intervention research, conducted in a municipal public school in Mogi das Cruzes/SP, aimed to guide elementary school teachers to use some language involving mental terms and verbs during story telling to their students, explaining the characters mental states. The participants were two teachers and 50 students, 27 boys and 23 girls, between five years old and 5 years and 11 months old. Two studies were developed (Study 1 and Study 2) by adopting the same design: a) a pre-test Wellman and Liu s (2004) scale of seven theory of mind tasks was applied to the children; b) intervention two meetings were held in order that the researcher could offer the teachers theoretical guidelines about the theory of mind, and ten practical workshops were carried out, in which the researcher worked on children s stories and taught the teachers how they should tell their students the stories by using some language involving mental terms and/or verbs; c) a post-test the seven theory of mind tasks were reapplied. All story telling developed by the teachers was transcribed and submitted to SPAD-T software. In Study 1, the teachers and their respective groups (25 students each group) were randomly chosen to be the experimental group (GE) and the control group (GC). The GE teacher received theoretical and practical instructions from the researcher in the intervention, whereas the GC teacher did not receive any instructions, she was just asked to tell the stories in her usual way. In Study 2, the teacher (control group of Study 1) received from the researcher the instructions to tell their students the stories. The results of both studies showed that after the intervention, the teachers started to adopt some language that was rich in mental terms, and such languge helped trigger the theory of mind in their students, who had a significantly better performance in the theory of mind tasks after their teachers had received the researcher s instructions. Such results support the hypothesis of a relation between the attribution of mental states and language development. The story telling activity in elementary school turned out to be a resource that favors the development of the theory of mind in children / A capacidade da criança para atribuir estados mentais como desejos, intenções e crenças a si própria e às outras pessoas, denominada teoria da mente, é fundamental para o êxito das relações sociais. Há indícios de que as histórias infantis contribuem com o desenvolvimento da teoria da mente. A presente pesquisa de intervenção, realizada em uma escola da rede pública municipal de ensino da cidade de Mogi das Cruzes/SP, teve por objetivo orientar professoras da Educação Infantil a utilizarem uma linguagem envolvendo termos e verbos mentais durante a contação de histórias para seus alunos, explicando os estados mentais dos personagens. Participaram duas professoras e 50 alunos, sendo 27 meninos e 23 meninas, com idade entre 5 anos e 5 anos e 11 meses. Foram realizados dois estudos (Estudo 1 e Estudo 2) adotando o mesmo delineamento: a) pré-teste foram aplicadas nas crianças as sete tarefas de teoria da mente da escala de Wellman e Liu (2004); b) intervenção foram realizadas 2 sessões nas quais a pesquisadora ofereceu às professoras explicações teóricas sobre a teoria da mente, e dez sessões práticas nas quais trabalhou com histórias infantis e as orientou sobre como deveriam contar histórias aos seus alunos, utilizando uma linguagem envolvendo termos e verbos mentais; c) pós-teste foram reaplicadas as sete tarefas de teoria da mente. Todas as contações de histórias feita pelas professoras foram transcritas e submetidas ao software SPAD-T. No Estudo 1, as professoras e suas respectivas turmas (cada uma com 25 alunos) foram escolhidas aleatoriamente para compor o grupo experimental (GE) e o grupo controle (GC). A professora do GE recebeu as instruções teóricas e práticas da pesquisadora na intervenção; já a professora do GC não recebeu nenhum tipo de orientação, apenas foi instruída a contar as histórias à sua maneira habitual. No Estudo 2, a professora (grupo controle do Estudo 1) passou a receber da pesquisadora as orientações para contar as histórias aos seus alunos. Os resultados dos dois estudos indicaram que após a intervenção, as professoras passaram a adotar uma linguagem enriquecida de termos mentais, e essa linguagem foi favorecedora da manifestação da teoria da mente em seus alunos, os quais tiveram um desempenho significativamente melhor nas tarefas de teoria da mente após as suas professoras terem recebido as orientações da pesquisadora. Esses resultados dão sustentação à hipótese de uma relação entre a atribuição de estados mentais e o desenvolvimento da linguagem. A atividade de contação de histórias nas classes de Educação Infantil mostrou-se como um recurso favorecedor do desenvolvimento da teoria da mente em crianças

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-28T20:56:59Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Simone Priscila Paludeto.pdf: 1981101 bytes, checksum: 40c0a9203c006913d1ab71e910e22e46 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-02-26 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / The theory of mind and empathy are important socio-cognitive skills whose theoretical boundaries are not clearly defined. These skills develop gradually in children, and are essential to everyday interactions and children's social learning. Thus, we find it relevant to study the relationship between the development of theory of mind and empathy, as these two skills are important dimensions of social-emotional development and children's social-cognitive. The main objective of this research was to investigate the associations between theory of mind and empathic ability in children during early childhood education. Thus, our study aims to investigate the relationship between theory of mind and empathy as integral parts of social cognitive development. Participants in this study included 40 children aged between 3 and 6 years. Children's performance in tasks theory of mind and empathy, quantitatively and qualitatively, was analyzed by age group. Children were considered to be 3, 4, 5 and 6 years, descriptively, and then two groups of 3 and 4 years and 5 and 6 years. The second analysis was performed using the Student T test. Analysis of correlation between theory of mind and empathy with the Pearson test was performed. The results showed the existence of a correlation between empathy and theory of mind, although not statistically significant, except in relation to the false belief task. Also, we could see a correlation in our study between better performance of children in theory of mind and empathy with increasing age of the child / A teoria da mente e a empatia, cujas fronteiras teóricas ainda não estão claramente definidas, são habilidades sociocognitivas importantes, que se desenvolvem gradualmente na infância, sendo fundamentais para interações cotidianas e aprendizagem social da criança. Acreditamos relevante estudar a relação entre o desenvolvimento da teoria da mente e a empatia, visto que tais habilidades são dimensões importantes do desenvolvimento socioemocional e sociocognitivo da criança. O objetivo do presente estudo é investigar associações entre a teoria da mente e a habilidade empática em crianças da educação infantil. Dessa forma, nosso estudo propõe-se verificar a relação entre a teoria de mente e a empatia como partes integrantes do desenvolvimento sociocognitivo. Participaram desta pesquisa 40 crianças com idades compreendidas entre 3 e 6 anos. Foi analisado o desempenho das crianças nas tarefas de teoria da mente e empatia, quantitativa e qualitativamente, por faixa etária. Foram consideradas as crianças de 3, 4, 5 e 6 anos de maneira descritiva e depois dois grupos: de 3 e 4 anos e de 5 e 6 anos. Para essa segunda análise, foi utilizado o teste T de Student. Também foi utilizada a análise de correlação entre teoria da mente e empatia com o teste de Pearson. Os resultados demonstraram a existência de uma correlação entre empatia e teoria da mente estatisticamente significativa, no que diz respeito à tarefa de crença falsa, mas não significativa nas outras tarefas de teoria da mente. Também foi verificado neste estudo um melhor desempenho das crianças em teoria da mente e em empatia conforme o aumento da idade da criança

La tesi è articolata in due studi entrambi condotti nel settore di studi della teoria della mente. I due ambiti indagati sono l'abilità di finzione e la comprensione morale, in condizioni evolutive tipiche e atipiche. Il primo ambito indagato è il gioco di finzione nello sviluppo tipico, in particolare in riferimento all'interazione con la madre. I dati ottenuti dallo studio condotto, in cui si sono analizzate le espressioni verbali materne, supportano l'ipotesi dell'esistenza di una tendenza delle madri ad utilizzare un linguaggio mentalistico in modo appropriato durante l'interazione di finzione con i loro bambini. Il secondo ambito di indagine è la comprensione morale, nello specifico la valutazione delle intenzioni che sottendono azioni di valenza morale in soggetti autistici. Lo studio condotto analizza la capacità di mentalizzazione e di comprensione morale e i loro eventuali legami, nell'autismo ad alto funzionamento e nello sviluppo tipico. I risultati della ricerca mostrano che, in accordo con la letteratura, si riscontrano difficoltà negli autistici nelle prove mentalistiche, ma non nelle prove sulla comprensione morale. / My dissertation consists of two researches concerning theory of mind, in particular pretend play and moral understanding, in typical and atypical development. The first study investigated the maternal mental language used during mother-child interaction in pretend and real contexts. The results suggest that mothers used an appropriated mental language during the mother-child interaction in pretend. The second study analyzed theory of mind and moral understanding in children with autism high-functioning and normal development children. The aim of this research was to explore evaluation of the intention of moral action and its link with mentalization ability. According to literature, results show significant differences between autistic and control groups in theory of mind tasks, but not in moral understanding tasks.