Theory of mind development and attentional processes in young school children.

Abstract

The following study explored relations between theory of mind understanding, attention, language ability, and general intelligence. Scores on measures of auditory processing (Test of Auditory Reasoning and Processing Skills), language comprehension (Test of Auditory Comprehension of Language, Revised), matrix completion (Raven\u27s Colored Progressive Matrices), false belief and recursive thinking understanding were obtained along with teacher ratings of children\u27s self-regulation as measured by Attention and Hyperactivity subscales of the Conner\u27s Rating Scale. Analysis of zero-order correlations revealed self-regulation to be negatively correlated with recursive thinking, while age, general intelligence, auditory processing, and language ability were positively correlated with theory of mind comprehension. Regression analyses revealed that language ability and auditory processing accounted for the most variance in performance on theory of mind measures. These results are discussed with respect to their application to social skills training with children who exhibit attention deficits

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