Open Collections

Haddock, Taeh Bonn

University of British Columbia

Individual differences in mental state understanding, or ‘theory of mind’, predict individual differences in social-emotional functioning. Despite the importance of theory of mind and social-emotional functioning, the majority of research has used measures that tap only one or two aspects of mental state understanding (e.g., false beliefs) and social-emotional functioning (e.g., prosocial behaviour). My dissertation expands on earlier work by including multi-faceted measures allowing me to: (a) test whether theory of mind as a whole predicts social-emotional functioning, (b) examine which facet of theory of mind is most predictive, and (c) compare the magnitude of the relationship between theory of mind and different facets of social-emotional functioning. Across 2 studies (n = 768 children aged 3 to 12) I found that theory of mind as a global construct (measured by the Children’s Social Understanding Scale; CSUS) predicts multiple facets of children’s social-emotional functioning (measured by the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire in both studies and the Social Skills Improvement System in Study 2). In Study 2 parents also completed a self-report measure of their theory of mind (i.e., Empathy Quotient) revealing that maternal theory of mind was a predictor of their child’s social-emotional functioning and mental state understanding, with the relationship to children’s social-emotional functioning primarily explained by children’s mental state understanding. My work made three additional contributions: (1) identifying the factor structure underlying mental state understanding in the CSUS, (2) examining how each factor predicts children’s social-emotional functioning, and (3) examining how parents’ theory of mind predicts each factor of their child’s theory of mind. Exploratory Factor Analysis revealed a two-factor structure that appears to represent ‘basic’ versus ‘complex’ mental state understanding. Analyses revealed that complex mental state understanding was most predictive of children’s social-emotional functioning, and maternal theory of mind was most predictive of children’s complex mental state understanding. My work advances our understanding of the nature of the relationships between children’s theory of mind and social-emotional functioning by providing a more comprehensive analyses of these relationships, and highlighting that complex mental state understanding is of particular importance to children’s social-emotional wellbeing.

Text

2025-01-31

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/80458

Psychology

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/