Valle Annalisa, Massaro Davide, Castelli Ilaria, Marchetti Antonella
Department of Psychology, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, Italy.
Eur J Psychol. 2015 Feb 27;11(1):112-24. doi: 10.5964/ejop.v11i1.829. eCollection 2015 Feb.
This study explores the development of theory of mind, operationalized as recursive thinking ability, from adolescence to early adulthood (N = 110; young adolescents = 47; adolescents = 43; young adults = 20). The construct of theory of mind has been operationalized in two different ways: as the ability to recognize the correct mental state of a character, and as the ability to attribute the correct mental state in order to predict the character's behaviour. The Imposing Memory Task, with five recursive thinking levels, and a third-order false-belief task with three recursive thinking levels (devised for this study) have been used. The relationship among working memory, executive functions, and linguistic skills are also analysed. Results show that subjects exhibit less understanding of elevated recursive thinking levels (third, fourth, and fifth) compared to the first and second levels. Working memory is correlated with total recursive thinking, whereas performance on the linguistic comprehension task is related to third level recursive thinking in both theory of mind tasks. An effect of age on third-order false-belief task performance was also found. A key finding of the present study is that the third-order false-belief task shows significant age differences in the application of recursive thinking that involves the prediction of others' behaviour. In contrast, such an age effect is not observed in the Imposing Memory Task. These results may support the extension of the investigation of the third order false belief after childhood.
本研究探讨了从青少年期到成年早期心理理论的发展，心理理论以递归思维能力来衡量（N = 110；青少年早期 = 47；青少年 = 43；青年成人 = 20）。心理理论的构建已通过两种不同方式来衡量：一是识别角色正确心理状态的能力，二是为预测角色行为而归因正确心理状态的能力。研究使用了具有五个递归思维水平的强加记忆任务，以及为此研究设计的具有三个递归思维水平的三阶错误信念任务。同时还分析了工作记忆、执行功能和语言技能之间的关系。结果表明，与第一和第二水平相比，受试者对较高递归思维水平（第三、第四和第五水平）的理解较少。工作记忆与总递归思维相关，而在两项心理理论任务中，语言理解任务的表现与第三水平递归思维有关。研究还发现年龄对三阶错误信念任务的表现有影响。本研究的一个关键发现是，三阶错误信念任务在涉及预测他人行为的递归思维应用中显示出显著的年龄差异。相比之下，在强加记忆任务中未观察到这种年龄效应。这些结果可能支持在儿童期之后对三阶错误信念进行进一步研究。
