Language and Theory of Mind

Theory of mind is the capacity for understanding how thoughts and feelings underlie what people say and do. It is the interpretive key that helps people make sense of the social world. Children's language acquisition is the pathway for their participation in the social world. With language, children share thoughts, feelings, and meaning with others. Together, theory of mind and language catalyze the development of social understanding in childhood. This book is about research and theory devoted to understanding how that happens. Research on language and theory of mind spans multiple disciplines and multiple decades. This book organizes and integrates the expansive literature, providing a comprehensive portrait of what we know, and still need to know, about the role of language in children's understanding of the mental world. The authors discuss how children come to talk about the mind, the contributions of caregiver-child conversation to theory of mind development, and the pragmatic skills infants and children need for a meeting of the minds within conversation. Coverage also explores the fundamental relation that theory of mind has with narrative comprehension and engagement with fiction throughout the lifespan. Excerpts from parent-child conversations in each chapter illuminate how the social use of language is tied to understanding the mind. The authors synthesize the language-theory of mind literature into a cohesive presentation intended for researchers and graduate students in psychology and related fields such as education, philosophy, and psycholinguistics, as well as practitioners who work with children in clinical and educational settings.