Hou Xiao-Hui, Gong Zhu-Qing, Wang Liu-Ji, Zhou Yuan, Su Yanjie
Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Education, School of Education Science, Nanning Normal University, Nanning, China.
Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
Front Psychol. 2020 Oct 26;11:554023. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.554023. eCollection 2020.
In the field of social influences on Theory of Mind (ToM), more research has focused on the role of parents, but less research has examined the impact of siblings on children's social understanding. We review existing research related to what factors might affect sibling-ToM association and how these potential factors affect ToM. Based on the literature review, we propose an integrative model that unites three categories of factors (i.e., sibling structural variables, sibling individual variables, parental intervening variables) that might have effects on the sibling-ToM association and highlights mental-state talks during sibling interactions at the intersection of sibling-related variables and ToM. Furthermore, we propose some issues arising from this review that need to be clarified in future studies. Specifically, we hope to clarify the specific effects of older and younger siblings on children's understanding of human minds, the similarities and differences of sibling-ToM association under different cultural backgrounds, and the impact of family social disadvantage (e.g., lower SES) on the sibling-ToM association. All these works would benefit from the verification, revision, and expansion of our reciprocal influence model for the sibling-ToM association.
在社会对心理理论（ToM）的影响领域，更多研究聚焦于父母的作用，而较少研究考察兄弟姐妹对儿童社会理解的影响。我们回顾了与哪些因素可能影响兄弟姐妹与心理理论的关联以及这些潜在因素如何影响心理理论相关的现有研究。基于文献综述，我们提出了一个综合模型，该模型整合了可能对兄弟姐妹与心理理论的关联产生影响的三类因素（即兄弟姐妹结构变量、兄弟姐妹个体变量、父母干预变量），并强调了在兄弟姐妹相关变量与心理理论的交叉点上，兄弟姐妹互动过程中的心理状态对话。此外，我们提出了本次综述中出现的一些需要在未来研究中加以澄清的问题。具体而言，我们希望阐明年长和年幼的兄弟姐妹对儿童心理理解的具体影响、不同文化背景下兄弟姐妹与心理理论关联的异同，以及家庭社会劣势（如较低的社会经济地位）对兄弟姐妹与心理理论关联的影响。所有这些工作都将受益于我们对兄弟姐妹与心理理论关联的相互影响模型的验证、修订和扩展。
