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Young Children's Understanding of Other People's Feelings and Beliefs: Individual D i f f e r e n c e s

and Their A n t e c e d e n t s
Author(s): J u d y Dunn, Jane B r o w n , C h e r y l Slomkowski, Caroline Tesla and Lise Youngblade
Reviewed work(s):
Source:
Vol. 62, No. 6 (Dec., 1991), pp. 1352-1366
Published b y : Wiley on behalf of t h e Society for Research in Child Development
Stable URL: http://www.jst0r.0rg/stable/l 130811

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Young Children's Understanding of Other

People's Feelings and Beliefs: Individual
Differences and Their Antecedents
Judy Dunn, Jane Brown, Cheryl Slomkowski,
Caroline Tesla, and Lise Youngblade
The

Pennsylvania

State

University

D U N N , J U D Y ; B R O W N , JANE; S L O M K O W S K I , C H E R Y L ; T E S L A , C A R O L I N E ; a n d Y O U N G B L A D E , L I S E . Young

Children's
Understanding of Other People's Feelings and Beliefs:
Individual Differences
and
Their Antecedents. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1991, 62, 1 3 5 2 - 1 3 6 6 . Individual d i f f e r e n c e s in y o u n g
children's understanding of others' feelings and in their ability to explain human action in terms
of b e l i e f s , and the earlier correlates of these d i f f e r e n c e s , w e r e studied with 50 children o b s e r v e d
at h o m e with mother and sibling at 33 months, then tested at 40 months on affective-labeling,
perspective-taking, and false-belief tasks. Individual d i f f e r e n c e s in social understanding w e r e
marked; a third of the children o f f e r e d explanations of actions in terms of false b e l i e f , though
f e w p r e d i c t e d actions on the basis of beliefs. T h e s e differences w e r e associated with participation
in family discourse about feelings and causality 7 months earlier, verbal fluency of mother and
c h i l d , and c o o p e r a t i v e interaction with the sibling. D i f f e r e n c e s in understanding f e e l i n g s w e r e
also associated with the discourse measures, the quality of mother-sibling interaction, SES, and
g e n d e r , with girls m o r e successful than boys. T h e results support the v i e w that d i s c o u r s e about
the social w o r l d may in part mediate the key conceptual advances reflected in the social c o g n i t i o n
tasks; interaction b e t w e e n child and sibling and the relationships b e t w e e n other family m e m b e r s
are also implicated in the growth of social understanding.

The very early stages of children's understanding of other minds and others' feelings have in the last few years received rapidly growing attention (Astington, Harris, &
Olson, 1988; Frye & Moore, 1990; Whiten,
1990); particular interest has been shown in
the question of when young children are
aware of mental states and of the psychological causes of behavior (Miller & Aloise,
1989). Research strategies have included the
documentation of the recognition and differentiation of emotions by infants (Harris,
1989); the development of children's use
of, first, feeling state terms and, later, mental terms (Bretherton, McNew, & BeeghlySmith, 1981; Ridgeway, Waters, & Kuczaj,
1985; Shatz, Wellman, & Silber, 1983); the
distinctions very young children make between the mental and physical worlds involving knowledge states (Wellman, 1985);
and their ability to reason about and explain
human action in terms of beliefs and desires.
A focus of special interest has been the development of children's ability to predict
and explain actions that are premised on

mistaken or false beliefs, in terms of what

another person thinks or believes (Olson,
Astington, & Harris, 1988). As Bartsch and
Wellman (1989) put it, "Understanding actions in terms of beliefs and desires is fundamental to understanding people and to
social action. A central question for developmental research, therefore, concerns
when we are able to participate in this system of reasoning." The issue of interest here
is not so much children's understanding of
false belief per setheir grasp of the idea
that people can believe something that is not
truebut rather their growing understanding of how belief or desire influences behavior.
In this burst of productive research on
children's "theories of mind," the focus has
been on describing with cross-sectional
studies the ages at which particular abilities
are manifest and on delineating the nature
of the limitations and problems children
have in conceiving of others' mental states
and in understanding false beliefs as a basis

T h i s study was supported by an N I H grant ( H D 23158-02); we are very grateful to the

families w h o participated in the study, and to Susan Evans, Stephanie M c G h e e , and Clare
Stacker for their contributions to the project. Requests for reprints should be addressed to Judy
D u n n , C e n t e r for the Study of C h i l d and A d o l e s c e n t D e v e l o p m e n t , C o l l e g e of Health and H u man D e v e l o p m e n t , T h e Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802.
[Child Development, 1991,62,1352-1366. 1991 by the Society for Research in Child Development, Inc.
All rights reserved. 0009-3920/91/6206-0006$01.00]

for action. Although there is considerable

disagreement about the earliest stages of this
understanding, it is generally agreed that between 3 and 5 years children's ability to reflect on other minds and their understanding
of the psychological bases of human action
change markedly in nature.
Within this research on children's understanding of "other minds" there has been
no consideration, as yet, of individual differences in the abilities of children to conceive
of mental states or in their grasp of the basis
of people's actions in terms of beliefs. Yet if
the growth of this ability is such a central
aspect of human development, the question
of what influences differences in its developmental course is surely important, as is
the matter of the prognostic significance of
individual differences in the timing of its
early appearance. To date, we have no information on either issue. We do not know
whether differences are related primarily to
individual differences in, for example, children's verbal intelligence, or to children's
experience of participation in discussions of
why people behave as they do, or the quality
of their family relationships more broadly
considered.
In contrast, studies of the recognition
and understanding of emotions in preschool
children have included a number of investigations of individual differences, such as
studies of individual differences in response
to distress (Cummings, Hollenbeck, Ianotti,
Radke-Yarrow, & Zahn-Waxler, 1986; Denham & Couchoud, 1990; Main & George,
1985), in talk about emotions (Dunn, Bretherton, & Munn, 1987), in comforting (Murphy, 1937) and hurting (Dunn & Kendrick,
1982), and in understanding the situational
causes of another's emotion (Denham, 1986).
Among the variables thought to influence
these individual differences, the following
have been cited: parental socialization techniques (Denham & Couchoud, 1990), parental verbal explanation, discourse about emotions and moral messages (Dunn et al., 1987;
Zahn-Waxler, Radke-Yarrow, & King, 1979),
children's perspective-taking ability (Stewart & Marvin, 1984), and individual differences in children's sociability or assertiveness (Murphy, 1937). With children of 5 and
above, individual differences in emotional
understanding have been linked to their sociometric status and social competence with
peers (Cassidy & Parke, 1990; Gnepp, 1989;
Rothenberg, 1970), to the emotional expressiveness of their parents (Cassidy & Parke,
1990), to parent-child discourse about feel-

ing states (Dunn, Brown, & Beardsall, 1991),

and to cognitive ability (Rothenberg, 1970).
The relative importance of these various
potential influences on the development of
children's emotional understanding remains
to be established with young children. One
study reports, for instance, associations between frequency of family discourse about
feeling states in the preschool period and
children's ability in middle childhood to
make judgments about emotions in an affective perspective-taking task (Dunn et al.,
1991). However, it remains possible that differences between families in such discourse
are correlated with other differences in family interaction, and no inferences about the
unique contribution of discourse in the development of understanding are possible until both discourse and family interaction
variables are considered together. The possible role of such variables in contributing
to individual differences in children's understanding of mental states has not yet been
examined. It is not known whether such differences are attributable to differences in
cognitive or verbal ability, or whether interactional experiences within the family also
play a role in their development. The issue
of how far language experiences are related
to the conceptual development reflected in
children's growing understanding of "other
minds" remains to be explored. It is a reasonable hypothesis that family conversations
about why people behave the way they do
may foster the development of children's understanding of the connection between others' thoughts and beliefs and their behavior.
It is also compatible with Wellman's (1988)
proposal that 3-year-olds' understanding of
human action is based on an everyday folk
psychology in which actions are explained
in terms of the wishes, hopes, beliefs, and
intentions of the actor. However, such a possibility has not yet been tested.
In this article, such an examination is
carried out, with data from a longitudinal
study in which children were first observed
within their families at 33 months, and then
tested at 40 months on their understanding
of others, with two types of assessment. An
assessment of their understanding of how
another person's beliefs will affect his or her
behavior, developed by Bartsch and Wellman (1989), was conducted. In this series of
tasks the focus is specifically on the children's ability to explain the actions taken by
another when those actions are the consequence of a belief the child knows to be incorrect, and their ability to predict the be-

havior of another who is in possession of a

belief that the child knows to be false. An
assessment of affective perspective-taking
developed by Denham (1986) was also employed: this involves a series of scenarios
enacted with puppets in which the children's understanding of the situational determinants of another's feelings is assessed.
The first goal of the article is to describe
individual differences in children's understanding of feelings and of how people's actions are premised on their beliefs at a stage
when, according to current work on children's theory of mind, some but not all children are able to reflect on mental states and
to explain behavior in terms of beliefs.
The second goal is to examine associations between such individual differences in
understanding others and a number of variables from children's family experiences 7
months earlier. First, we were interested in
the possibility that differences in children's
experiences of family discourse about feeling states, and about the causes of behavior
and events, might be linked to later individual differences in understanding others'
feelings and in comprehending the connections between beliefs and behavior. As already noted, family conversations about
feelings have been found to relate to later
affective perspective-taking assessments
(Dunn et al., 1991). The potential significance of family discourse about causality lies
in the opportunity that such discourse provides for children to enquire, argue, and reflect about why people behave the way that
they do. Children's participation in conversation about cause is focused especially on
psychological causality (Hood & Bloom,
1979); the hypothesis is examined here that
differences in such participation in causal
talk and feeling state talk are associated with
later differences in understanding of belief
as the basis for action.
Second, we considered the possibility
that differences in the quality of relationships between different family members
may be implicated in the development of
differences in social understanding. Here,
we wished to examine not only the quality of
relations between mother and child, widely
considered to be important in the development of social understanding, but also the
possibility that the relations between other
family members (mother to sibling, sibling
to mother) may also be implicated in the development of social understanding. Children are sensitive observers of the emotional

exchanges between others (Cummings,

Zahn-Waxler, & Radke-Yarrow, 1981; Dunn
& Munn, 1985); they may well, as family
members, learn from observing the interactions between others. The relations between
child and sibling were also included as a
focus of interest: work on older children
indicates that differences in emotional understanding are related to children's experiences with peers (e.g., Cassidy & Parke,
1990). Third, we examined the possibility
that differences in children's social understanding, as reflected in assessments that depend on verbal answers, are primarily related to differences in verbal ability, in the
educational and social background of the
family, or the child's gender.
The third goal of the paper is to examine
how much of the variance in these aspects
of children's social understanding could be
explained by combinations of these family
and background variables, and what independent contribution to the variance was
made by the discourse, relationship, and
background variables, respectively.
Method
SUBJECTS

The subjects were 50 second-born children, participating with their older siblings
and their mothers in a longitudinal study
in central Pennsylvania. There were 23
boys (13 with older brothers, 10 with older
sisters) and 27 girls (10 with older sisters
and 17 with older brothers). The mean age
gap between the siblings was 43 months
(range 1673). The families, recruited from
sequential birth announcements in the local
newspaper, included a wide range of backgrounds; the occupational status of the fathers was assessed with the National Opinion Research Corporation prestige ratings
based on the 1970 census (Hauser & Featherman, 1977): the mean paternal prestige rating was 51.5 (SD = 16.3), the range from 15
to 88. For the U.S. white labor force, the
mean NORC rating is 41.7 (SD = 13.9); thus
although the Pennsylvania sample has a
higher occupational prestige rating than the
working U.S. population, the variance is
similar. Mean values for parental education
were 14.7 (SD = 2.4) years and 15.4 (SD =
2.9) years for mothers and fathers, respectively.
PROCEDURES

The families were visited at home, at

two time points: when the children were

33 months old (time 1), and 40 months old

(time 2).
Time 1 Observations
At time 1, two observations, each of 1
hour 15 min, were carried out 1 week apart.
The observations were unstructured and
carried out by a single observer. To reduce
the intrusive effect of the observer's presence, the same observer visited the family
on each occasion, and did not begin recording until at least 15 min after her arrival. We emphasized to the mothers that
we wished to study "normal" interaction between the siblings and to disrupt family patterns of interaction as little as possible. The
mothers continued to carry out their usual
domestic routine while we were present.
Family conversation during the observation was recorded on a portable audiotape
recorder, and paper-and-pencil recording
methods were used (see Dunn & Munn,
1987, for similar methods). The observer targeted her observations on the second-born
child and noted in a lined notebook who was
present with the child, recording the time
that different family members entered or left
the room in which the target child was; a
narrative record was kept in which details of
the context and affect of family members
were noted. Context details included, for
example, the actions that led to a dispute,
the details of pretend or cooperative play,
and nonverbal behavior such as provocative
physical teasing. Shortly after the observation the observer prepared a detailed transcript of the observation, including all family
talk and the nonverbal record. Following the
observation, the observer rated each family
member's behavior toward each other family
member in a series of rating scales, focusing
on the mother's responsiveness, attention,
control, and affection to the child and to
the sibling, and on the child's and the sibling's conflict, cooperation, control, competition, and attention toward each other (see
Stacker, Dunn, & Plomin, 1989). The data
from the observations reported here concern
children's conversations with their mothers
and siblings (specifically, their conversations concerning feeling states and concerning causality) and the ratings of family members' interaction. Details of the discourse
measures used, and these rating scales, are
given below.
Time 2 Social Cognition Tasks
At time 2, two visits were made in which
the sociocognitive assessments considered
in this article, the false belief tasks (Bartsch

& Wellman, 1989), and the affective perspective-taking tasks (Denham, 1986), were
conducted. On the first visit, the false belief
tasks were carried out with the children.
A questionnaire was also administered to
mothers to decide on appropriate content for
the affective perspective-taking task for each
child (see below). On the second visit, the
affective perspective-taking task was carried
out; information on the parents' occupations
and education was obtained from an interview with the mother. Six observers were
involved in the data collection.
MEASURES

Conversational Measures
The transcripts provided a data base of
on average 316 child speaker turns, 356
turns of mother and sibling to the child
(Table 1). A speaker turn was defined as all
of one speaker's utterances bounded by the
utterances of another speaker. The correlations between the measures on the first
and second visits at time 1 gave an estimate
of test-retest reliability for the different
speaker turns; these were as follows: child
to mother r(50) = .69, mother to child r(50)
= .74, child to sibling r(50) = .68, sibling to
child r(50) = .68, all significant at p < .05.
Mean Length of Utterance
The mean length and the upperbound
mean length of each child's utterances were
coded following standard procedures (Shatz
& Gelman, 1973) from the 100 consecutive
child utterances that followed the child's
first 10 conversational turns. The number of
words in the 10 longest of these utterances
was used to determine the upperbound
MLU. The mothers' MLU and upperbound
MLU were similarly calculated. The MLU
and upperbound MLU were positively correlated for both mothers and children, r(50)
= .86 and .85, for mothers and for children,
respectively, both p < .001, and the pattern
of correlations with these measures and the
other time 1 measures to be reported was
very similar. In the analyses that follow we
therefore report just the results for the upperbound MLU.
Feeling State Talk
A coding system was designed for the
analysis of conversations in which family
members referred to feeling states (see
Dunn etal., 1991). References included conversational turns in which the speaker used
a feeling state term (e.g., "sad" or "happy"),
those in which the speaker used a phrase
that connoted a feeling state (e.g., "made a

TABLE

MEANS AND STANDARD DEVIATIONS OF DISCOURSE MEASURES

FEELING

STATE

TURNS
TOTAL
SPEAKERS

Child to mother
and sib
Mother and sib to
child
Mother and child
conversation

CAUSAL

(%)

TURNS

TURNS

(%)

Mean

SD

Mean

SD

Mean

SD

316.4

162.5

4.1

2.7

2.7

2.3

355.9

166.4

7.8

3.3

7.4

3.1

441.5

286.3

6.4

3.0

5.9

3.1

UPPERBOUND

MLU
Mean
Child
Mother to child

MLU
SD

Mean

SD

3.67

.82

7.17

1.53

5.38

.78

11.93

2.20

fuss"), and those in which an expletive was

used that connoted a particular feeling state
(e.g., "Yuck!" [disgust]). Nonspecific expletives (e.g., "Aha!"), crying, or laughter were
not included in this coding scheme. Statements of a moral or evaluative nature were
included only if their content specifically
denoted or connoted a feeling state on the
part of the speaker or person referred to (e.g.,
"That's disgusting!"). The term "like" was
included only when it referred to a state of
enjoyment or dislike, not when it indicated
desire or volition, as in the example "Would
you like to have this toy?" Terms that projected feeling states as attributes onto the
persons or objects that elicited them (e.g.,
"scary" or "poor") were included.

ing state turns) as an index of the child's participation in family talk about feelings; total
feeling state turns to child (i.e., mother to
child 4- sibling to child feeling state turns)
as an index of the talk directly addressed
to the target child concerning feelings;
mother-child total feeling state turns (i.e.,
mother to child + child to mother feeling
state turns) as an index of the conversations
between mother and child about feelings;
this was included because the previous
study had found mother-child conversational turns about feeling states to be the
most powerful predictor of later affective
perspective taking. Frequencies of these
measures, and of the total turns in the observations, are shown in Table 1.

A conversational turn referring to feeling states was defined as all of one speaker's
utterances bounded by the utterances of another speaker in which an explicit reference
to a feeling state was made. If an individual's
utterances within one conversational turn
referred to more than one emotional theme,
or to more than one individual's feelings,
each reference was coded separately. Each
conversational turn that referred to a feeling
state was coded in terms of a number of variables (speaker, addressee, theme, dispute,
causal reference, pragmatic context). In the
present article, we consider the categories of
speaker and addressee, and employ measures of total feeling state turns. In our initial
examination of the data we employed three
measures: total child feeling state turns
(i.e., child to mother + child to sibling feel-

Talk about Causality

A second coding system was designed
for the analysis of conversations about causality, in which speaker turns wherein a
causal relationship was discussed were included. It should be noted that in those analyses in which both feeling state talk and
causal talk turns were entered, those speaker
turns that included both causal and feeling
state references were entered only once.
The turn could be related to the causal component of the conversation as either the antecedent or consequent of the causal reference ("You broke my glass [antecedent] and
that makes me sad" [consequent]). The criteria used to determine whether a causal inference was made were based on those developed by Hood and Bloom (1979). Causal
statements by young children and indeed

also adults do not invariably contain causal

connectives (see Hood & Bloom, 1979); thus
turns coded as causal included, in addition
to those in which an explicit causal term was
used (e.g., " w h y " or "because"), turns in
which a reference was made to two events
or states that had a conditional relationship
(e.g., "Don't jump, you'll break that!"). Measures of causal talk paralleled those of the
feeling state talk, and included total child
causal turns (i.e., child causal turns to
mother + child causal turns to sibling, expressed as percentage of child total turns to
mother and sibling); total causal turns to
child (i.e., mother causal turns to child +
sibling causal turns to child, as percentage
of total mother and sibling turns to child);
mother and child total causal turns (i.e.,
mother to child and child to mother causal
turns). As with the feeling state coding, if
more than one causal reference occurred
within a speaker turn it was coded separately. All discussions of cause were coded;
it should be noted, however, that as with
other studies of causal conversations with
children of this age period (e.g., Hood &
Bloom, 1979), discussion of psychological/
behavioral causality predominated.
Intercoder agreement on the discourse
coding was assessed by coders coding the

same 20 transcripts. Intraclass correlation for

the coders' categorization of the total number of feeling state turns was .97, of the total
number of causal turns was .86, both significant at p < .05.
Rating Scales
The rating scales employed were developed in a previous study of mothers and
siblings (Stocker et al., 1989). Means and
standard deviation of scores are shown in
Table 2.
Mother's interaction with child and
with sibling.Four 5-point scales were
used: responsiveness, attention, controllintrusiveness, and affection. Taking affection
as an example, the scale ranged from (1)
many negative remarks, no physical affection, more negative than positive remarks, negative tone of voice even if content
is neutral, through (3) some praise and positive comments, some smiles and laughter
with child, some comments made with warm
tone of voice, to (5) many positive comments, many smiles, affectionate physical
contact, tone of voice very warm and
friendly, praise, and positive evaluation.
Child's interaction with sibling, and
sibling with child.Five 5-point scales
were used: conflict, cooperation, control/

TABLE
MEANS,

STANDARD DEVIATIONS,

2
INTER-RATER AGREEMENT,

AND T E S T - R E T E S T C O R R E L A T I O N S OF RATING SCALES

Mean

SD

Interrater
Agreement

Test-Retest
Correlation

...
...
...
...

3.87
3.28
3.13
3.57

.88
.92
.77
1.02

.82*
.80*
.80*
.83*

.74*
.73*
.19
.80*

...
...
...
...

3.48
2.86
2.32
3.03

.89
.80
.87
.94

.82*
.80*
.80*
.83*

.76*
.58*
.42*
.59*

...
...
...
...
...

2.52
2.81
2.11
1.98
2.86

.77
.86
.90
.82
1.11

.84*
.79*
.76*
.95*
.85*

.34*
.58*
.52*
.58*
.66*

...
...
...
...
...

2.73
2.88
3.22
2.41
2.89

.83
.94
1.02
.99
1.15

.84*
.79*
.76*
.95*
.85*

.39*
.55*
.60*
.57*
.63*

Rating Scales
Mother to child:
Responsiveness
Attention
Control
Affection
Mother to sibling:
Responsiveness
Attention
Control
Affection
Child to sibling:
Conflict
Cooperation
Control
Competition
Affection
Sibling to child:
Conflict
Cooperation
Control
Competition
Affection
* p < .05.

dominance, competition, and affection. Taking cooperation as an example, the scale

ranged from (1) no attempts to cooperate, no
innovatory suggestions for joint activity, refusal to cooperate with other's suggestions,
ignores other's conversational attempts,
through (3) follows suggestions, occasional
tentative attempts at cooperation, shares and
helps if requested, responds to questions
and comments on most occasions but may
fail to reply on occasion, brief sustained conversations, to (5) frequent attempts to cooperate, responds promptly to suggestions or
questions, frequent sustained conversation,
makes innovatory suggestions for cooperative play, friendly imitation, may praise sib,
let sib win in games, spontaneously helps or
shares. (Details of all scales are available
from authors.)
Interobserver agreement among the six
individuals who conducted the observations
was assessed from videotapes of 10 families
using Finn's r (shown in Table 2). This is an
appropriate index of reliability when there
is reduced variance in ratings (Finn, 1970,
1972; see also Tinsley & Weiss, 1975), which
takes account of chance agreement and gives
similar results to the intraclass correlation
(Finn, 1970, 1972). The videotaped families
were not part of the main study but were
from similar backgrounds. Test-retest reliabilities of these scales were assessed by
comparing the ratings given on visits 1 and
2 and are shown in Table 2.
Affective Labeling
The two procedures reported in Denham (1986) were followed. First, children
examined four faces made of felt on which
the expressions of happy, sad, angry, and
afraid were drawn. They were then asked to
identify these expressions, first expressively
with a verbal label, and then receptively, by
pointing to the appropriate face when the
experimenter asked, "Which is the happy/
sad/angry/afraid face?" They received 2
points for correct expressive, 2 points for correct receptive, and 1 point for expressively
or receptively identifying positive/negative
dimensions (e.g., " H e feels bad" rather than
"He feels angry/sad/afraid" would be given
a 1-point score [total correct = 16]).
Affective Perspective Taking
The puppets enacted 16 vignettes centered on emotion-inducing situations such as
having an unexpected visit to the zoo, a new
bicycle, having a frightening dream, seeing
a parent off on a trip, being punched by a
sibling, and being threatened with punish-

ment for a naughty act. Each vignette was

accompanied by vocal and visual affective
cues emitted by the puppet/observer. In
eight of these vignettes the puppet felt the
way most people would feel (e.g., fear during a nightmare; see Borke, 1971); in eight
the puppet felt the opposite of what the
mothers had reported in the questionnaire
administered at the previous visit that their
child would probably feel. This questionnaire focused on situations in which children's emotional reactions differ, such as
arrival at preschool, meeting a big though
friendly dog, or seeing a parent off on a trip.
In the second portion of the puppet tasks,
the puppet in these same situations expressed an emotion that was different from
that which the child (according to her
mother's report) herself expressed in that situation; thus, the task was designed to require inference about the puppet who was
expressing an emotion different from the
emotion typical for the child in that situation, but also within the realm of the child's
everyday experience. For example, mothers indicated whether their child would
be happy or sad to come to day-care and
whether they would be happy about or fearful of big dogs, and the puppet then enacted
the emotion that the child would not express
in that situation. After each of the vignettes,
the children were asked " H o w does the puppet feel?" and encouraged to fix the relevant
face on the puppet. Scoring proceeded as in
the affective labeling task. A total score for
the 16 vignettes was created (total correct =
32). As Denham (1986) found, scores on the
labeling and perspective-taking tasks were
correlated, r(50) = .69, p < .05. They
showed very similar patterns of correlations
with the other time 1 measures, and an affective aggregate score was therefore created by combining the scores of the two sets
of tasks (total score = 48). Cronbach's alpha
for the affective aggregate was .91.
False Belief Tasks
The children's understanding of false
belief was tested in a series of tasks that required them to predict how a puppet would
behave given a false belief, and also to give
an explanation of a puppet's behavior given
a false belief (Bartsch & Wellman, 1989).
The procedures described by Bartsch and
Wellman (1989) were followed. For each
task, the child was shown two small closed
boxes, one marked with a familiar and obvious picture (e.g., a Band-Aid box), and the
other a plain unmarked box of the same size
and color. At the beginning of the session,

the experimenter told the child, "Pick the

box that you think has Band-Aids in it." The
child picked one of the boxes (almost always
the marked container) and was told to look
inside it. The marked container was empty.
The child was then told to look inside the
other (plain) box, which was full of BandAids. The purpose of this part of the task
was to demonstrate that the marked box was
empty and the unmarked box was full. Both
boxes were then closed.
The child was then introduced to a series of hand puppets and given both prediction and explanation tasks. In the prediction
task, the child was told, for example, "Look,
here's Pam. Pam has a cut, see? And she
wants a Band-Aid. Where do you think she'll
look for Band-Aids?" The child's response,
either pointing or verbally indicating one of
the two boxes, was recorded. Then the puppet was made to start to look in the predicted
location, and the observer asked, "Will she/
he find [Band-Aids]?" In the explanation
tasks, the child was introduced to the puppet
and watched as the puppet started to look in
the marked, but empty, container. Then the
observer asked the child to explain the puppet's action. For example, "Look, here's Bill.
Bill has a cut, see? And he wants a BandAid." (Bill approaches the Band-Aid box and
starts to open it, without revealing its contents.) "Why do you think he's looking in
there?" If the child failed to respond or mentioned only something other than the puppet's beliefs, the observer prompted with:
"What does Bill think?" If a false belief was
mentioned, the child was asked, "Are the
Band-Aids there really?" to be certain that
the child had not forgotten the actual contents of the container.
Four types of marked containers were
used: a Band-Aid box, a crayon box, a PlayDoh box, and a raisin box. Each unmarked
box was of the same dimensions as its paired
marked box, but of a solid color. The different pairs of containers were used to sample
a variety of situations and to keep children
from becoming bored. Each pair was introduced immediately prior to the scenario in
which it was used. Three of the four types
of containers were used to present each
child with the nine total tasks. The remaining type of container was used for a filler task, designed to prevent children from
thinking simply that all of these boxes were
deceptive (the marked box actually contained the item).
Children were given a total of four pre-

diction and five explanation tasks. The

presentation of tasks was counterbalanced:
Prediction and explanation questions were
presented in an alternating format for each
child, and half the children received a prediction task first, while the other half received an explanation task first. The presentation of stimuli was also counterbalanced.
Scoring.On each of the four prediction tasks, children's responses were scored
as being either correct (predicting that the
puppet would search in the marked but
empty box) or incorrect (predicting that the
puppet would search in the unmarked but
full box). The child received one credit for
each correct prediction in the four stories;
total possible correct predictions was four.
To allow for chance correct replies, a child
needed three or more correct predictions to
"succeed"; two or less correct predictions
was coded as "failed."
On the five explanation tasks, correct answers were explanations that attributed a
false belief to the character, as in Bartsch
and Wellman (1989). For example, after
seeing the puppet start to look in the empty
Band-Aid box, each child was asked, "Why
do you think he's looking there?" One child
answered, "Because he thinks there's BandAids in it," pointing to the Band-Aid box.
Another child responded to this question
with "Don't know." In this case the observer
asked, "What does he think?" and the child
replied, "That there's Band-Aids in there."
In conjunction with the invariably correct
responses to the control question ("Are
there really?"), both of these answers, unprompted and prompted, were coded as
false belief attributions. Children giving one
or more explanations of the puppet's action in terms of the puppet's false belief,
prompted or unprompted, were coded as offering explanations in terms of false belief;
that is, the variable offering explanations
was dichotomized 0 = no explanation, 1 =
one or more explanations.
Results
The results of the analyses are presented in three sections. First, the individual differences in performance on the false
belief and affective perspective-taking tasks
are reported and the relation between children's scores on these measures presented.
Second, correlations between these time 2
measures and the measures from time 1 (discourse measures, SES, ratings of family interaction) are examined. Third, the variance

in the social cognition measures at time 2

that was explained jointly by the time 1 variables and the individual contribution of the
various time 1 measures is examined with
multiple regression analyses.
Time 2: Affective Aggregate
There was a wide range of individual
differences in the children's performance on
the Denham tasks. For the affective aggregate, scores ranged from 9 to 47; the mean
was 32.2 (SD 10.4).
False Belief Task
There were marked individual differences in the children's success on the various sections of the false belief tasks. First,
it should be noted that only seven children
succeeded on the prediction tasks. Fourteen
children offered at least one explanation in
terms of false belief. Given the small number of children who predicted actions in
terms of false belief (a finding in agreement
with those of Bartsch & Wellman, 1989), in
the analyses that follow we omit the prediction measure; the explanation measure is retained in view of the theoretical interest in
children's explanations in false belief tasks.
The relations between scores on the affective understanding tasks and on the false
belief task were next examined. Correlation
between the affective aggregate and the
false belief measure did not reach significance at the p < .05 level, r(50) = .25.
CORRELATIONS BETWEEN SCORES ON TIME 2
SOCIAL COGNITIVE TASKS AND MEASURES
FROM TIME 1

Correlations were next conducted between the two social cognition measures
from time 2 and (a) total number of talk turns
per hour of observation and the measures of
feeling state talk and causal talk during the
time 1 observations; (b) mother's education,
father's occupation, gender of the child, and
the upperbound MLU of child and mother;
and (c) the rating scales of family members'
interaction with each other.
There was no significant relation between total talk and the two social cognition
measures. Table 3 shows the correlations for
the discourse measures, the MLU measures,
gender, the education and SES measures,
and the significant correlations with the rating scales. For the affective aggregate score,
significant correlations were found with the
child's talk about feelings and about causality in the observations 7 months earlier, and
with mother-child conversations about feelings and the total talk to the child about feel-

ings. The score was also related to the children's and mothers' upperbound MLU and
the SES level, as reflected in the fathers' occupational prestige scores, and to gender.
Girls scored higher on the affective understanding measure.
Offering explanations in the false belief
tasks was related to the child's talk about
feeling states and to mother-child conversations about feeling states and about causality
at the earlier time point. Mothers' upperbound MLU was correlated with explanations in the false belief tasks, but the SES,
mothers' education, child MLU, and gender
associations did not reach significance.
The relations between the social cognition scores and the rating scales of family
members' interaction were examined next.
Mother-to-Child Ratings
The four maternal rating scales (responsiveness, attention, control/intrusiveness, affection) were each correlated with the two
social cognition measures from time 2. Of
the eight correlations, none was significant.
Mother-to-Sibling Ratings
Three of the eight correlations between
mother-to-sibling rating scales and the social
cognition measures were significant at p <
.05 (see Table 3). The attention and responsiveness that the mothers showed toward the
sibling was correlated with the children's
affective aggregate score at the later time
point, and the mothers' control/intrusiveness
toward the sibling was related to the children offering explanations in the false belief
tasks.
Child-to-Sibling Ratings
Three of the 10 correlations between
the five child-to-sibling scales and the two
social cognition measures were significant
(see Table 3): The social cognition measures
were related to the cooperation shown toward the sibling 7 months earlier, and affection to the sibling was also related to the
affective tasks.
Sibling-to-Child Ratings
Of the 10 correlations between the five
scales and the two social cognition scores,
two were significant; sibling affection and
cooperation were related to the child's later
score on the affective aggregate measure.
MULTIVARIATE ANALYSES OF THE
CORRELATES OF THE SOCIAL
COGNITION MEASURES

The analyses conducted so far indicate

that discourse about feelings and about cau-

TABLE 3
CORRELATIONS BETWEEN TIME 1 MEASURES AND TIME 2 SOCIAL
UNDERSTANDING

MEASUHES

Affective
Aggregate
F e e l i n g state talk:
C h i l d total
Total to child
Mother-child
Causal talk:
C h i l d total
Total to child
Mother-child
Child upperbound M L U
Mother u p p e r b o u n d M L U
Mother education
Father occupational prestige .
G e n d e r (girls = 1; b o y s = 2)
Rating scales: 3
Mother to sibling:
Responsiveness
Attention
Control
Affection
C h i l d to sibling:
Conflict
Cooperation
Control
Competition
Affection
Sibling to child:
Conflict
Cooperation
Control
Competition
Affection

.45*
.29*
.36*
.42*

False B e l i e f
Explanations

.31*
.14
.28*
.19

.06

.22

.51*
.35*
.26
.45*
-.36*

.20

.33*
.14
.24
.18

31*
28*
26
25

.09
-.06
.34*
.08

-.15
51*
04
06
33*

-.16
.38*
-.10
.04
.18

- .06
27*
26
- .03
35*

-.04
.15
.15
-.03
.20

.20

.42*

* Note that correlations for rating scales of mother to child are not included in the
table; all were nonsignificant.
* p < .05.

sality, SES and parental education, ratings

of mothers' behavior to the sibling, and ratings of child-sibling interaction are each related to some of the individual differences
in the outcome measures of social cognition.
However, the interpretation of these univariate associations is complicated by the relations between the variables from time 1. For
instance, it cannot be assumed that the discourse measures were related to outcome independently of SES or parental education.
In the third set of analyses, we examine (a)
the variance in each of the social cognition
measures that could be explained jointly by
these different sets of variables and (b) the
unique variance in each outcome measure
accounted for by each set of predictors.
Affective
Aggregate
Given the relatively small sample size,
we limited the variables to be entered to

four sets. On the basis of the preceding correlational analyses, the variables selected to
enter in the multiple regression for this variable were the rating of child-to-sibling cooperation, father's occupational prestige, the
upperbound MLU of child and mother entered as one step, and the discourse variables child talk about causality and child talk
about feelings (minus those turns in which
cause was discussed) entered as one step.
Table 4 shows that together these variables
accounted for 56% of the variance in the affective aggregate measure. By next conducting separate hierarchical multiple regression
analyses systematically excluding each of
the four sets of variables in turn, the unique
variance contributed by each variable was
determined. Table 4 shows that for the
affective aggregate variable, the discourse
variables independently contributed 10% of
the variance, the child-sibling cooperation

T A B L E

VARIANCE IN SOCIAL UNDERSTANDING MEASURES EXPLAINED BY DISCOURSE MEASURES,

Social U n d e r s t a n d i n g
Measure

Discourse
Measures

Change
in R ?

RATINGS OF INTERACTION,

R2

df

A f f e c t i v e aggregate

.56*

10.99

5.44

Child feeling
state" +
child
causal

.10*

Child cooperate
with sib

.07*

F a l s e b e l i e f task: e x p l a nations

.39*

7.08

4.45

Mother-child
causal +
child
feeling
state"

.04 +

Child cooperate
with sib
M o t h e r control
sib

.11*

Child feeling state talk minus causal turns.

p < .10.
* p < .05.
a

Ratings

Change
in R ?

.07*

SES
Father
prestige

S E S , AND UPPERBOUND M L U

Change
in R 2
.04 +

Upperbound
MLU

Change
in R

C h i l d and
mother

.05 +

Mother

.01

rating 7%, the SES variable a further 4%,

and the child and mother upperbound MLU
5%.
On the issue of gender, as noted earlier,
boys and girls differed on average on the
affective aggregate measure. However, we
are concerned here with the question of
whether these associations between the predictors and affective understanding interact
with gender. That is, does discourse about
feelings and causality, for instance, relate to
affective understanding differently for boys
and girls? With a sample of 50, power to detect such gender interactions is very limited.
However, in order to explore the possibility
of gender interactions, we conducted the
multiple regressions separately for boys and
girls. None of the differences between the
standardized beta weights for boys and girls
approached significance.
Explanation in the False Belief Task
On the basis of the previous correlational analyses, the variables selected for the
multiple regressions for the measure of explanation in the false belief tasks were as
follows: the child-sibling cooperation rating,
the mother-child causal and child feeling
state talk, the mother's upperbound MLU,
and the mother-sibling control rating. Table
4 shows that together these variables accounted for 39% of the variance in the explanation measure. The ratings of child-sibling
cooperation and of the mother's controlling/
intrusive behavior with the sibling independently contributed 11% and 7% to the prediction of this measure, and the discourse
variables 4% independent of the shared
variance.
Discussion
At 40 months, the children in this study
differed widely in their understanding of the
situational determinants of others' feelings,
and while some were able to explain actions
in terms of false beliefs, the majority were
not. While any direct comparison of performance on the explanation and prediction
tasks would be inappropriatewith one a
forced-choice and the other an open-ended
taskit is worth noting that twice as many
children provided explanations linking action to beliefs as those who made predictions successfully in the forced-choice tasks.
We take these results to support the argument of Bartsch and Wellman (1989) that
some children of this age can understand
belief constructs and can engage in beliefdesire reasoning, even though they fail tradi-

tional forced-choice false belief prediction

tasks that present a conflict between what
would satisfy the actor's desire and what she
believes (see, however, Moses & Flavell,
1990, for an interpretation of children's explanations that differs in some respects).
In this conflict, it appears that 3-year-olds
weigh the satisfaction of desire over belief;
they seem unlikely to suppose that someone
will act in a way that will not satisfy their
desires. Moreover, in everyday conversation
it is likely that children are witnesses to, or
participants in, conversations in which explanations for behavior in terms of belief are
given more often than predictions about how
belief will influence action. For example,
during the observations mothers frequently
attempted to sort out disagreements between siblings by explaining how the other
child's (often mistaken) beliefs governed his
or her actions: "He thought you had finished
yours"; "She didn't know I had promised it
to you"; "He thought it was his turn."
The exploration of the earlier correlates
of these abilities showed that children who
grew up in families in which they engaged
in conversations about feelings and about
causality were better able 7 months later to
explain the feelings and actions of the puppet characters in the task situations. While
the large number of correlations conducted
suggests caution about generalizing from
these data, the results do indicate the usefulness of studying not only global aspects
of family relationships but also the content
of family conversations. Each of these aspects of family interaction raises its own set
of issues about the development of individual differences. First, it is possible that in
the pattern of findings for family discourse
and affective perspective taking we may be
picking up a pattern of continuity in child
differences, rather than evidence for an association between parental or sibling talk and
later child outcome. Second, the continuity
between the discourse measures and the
abilities assessed 7 months later was not explained by the children's verbal fluency, nor
by the amount of talk in the family. We
should, of course, be very cautious about
suggesting causal links from these correlational data; the results, however, do support
the view that the conceptual development
reflected in the abilities revealed in the affective perspective-taking and false belief
tasks may have been encouraged through
the conversations in which the children
participatedthat is, that language specific
in content may have in part mediated the

conceptual development. It is of course

equally possible that children's participation
in conversations about causality and feelings
and their later performance on sociocognitive tasks both reflect some common underlying ability rather than any direct causal
link. Third, a larger number of correlations
were found for talk about feelings than talk
about causality. This may reflect the fact that
the causal talk category was not limited to
behavioral or psychological causality but included a broad range of causal discussion.
The results from the analysis of the ratings of family interaction raise four further
issues. First, associations were found between the children's cooperation with their
siblings and their later performance on the
social cognition tasks. Again, it would be inappropriate to draw conclusions about directional cause-effect links. It could be that
through cooperation and play with the sibling children gain insights into the thoughts,
actions, and feelings of the other childwho
is of course closer in interests and feelings
to the child than a parent would be. Such
a view is compatible with the arguments
for the significance of peer interaction in
sociocognitive development (Hartup, 1983).
However, it is also possible that with greater
skills of understanding others, children are
able to cooperate and play more effectively;
here the pattern of results would be seen as
reflecting a continuity in differences between children. Such an argument would be
supported by the evidence for a positive
relation between emotional understanding
and children's relationships with peers (Cassidy & Parke, 1990; Denham, McKinley,
Couchoud, & Holt, 1990; Rothenberg, 1970).
In common sense terms, it seems likely
that both processes may operate. Second,
the lack of association between ratings of
mother-child interaction and the social cognition tasks should be noted. Connections
might well have been expected here, especially in light of the associations between
mother-child discourse and the outcome
measures. This failure to demonstrate connections could reflect insensitivity of the ratings of maternal behavior (though the findings on mother-to-sibling ratings decrease
the plausibility of this interpretation). It
could also beas we have notedthat it is
child differences, rather than differences in
maternal behavior, that are key to the connection between the discourse and social
cognition measures, at least within the range
of differences within this sample.
The third point concerns the question

of why there should be a clearer pattern of

association between the family measures
and the children's affective perspectivetaking measure than the false belief measure. It could be that this is primarily a statistical matter, which reflects differences in the
distribution of scores in the two outcome
measureswith a greater range of individual variation in the affective perspectivetaking measure. Such a difference reflects in
part the different developmental course of
the growth of these two aspects of social understanding: Understanding of emotions appears earlier in childhood than the ability to
understand other minds and to relate actions
to beliefs. However, an intriguing issue
for future investigation is the question of
whether these two domains of social understanding are in fact influenced to differing
degrees by the features of family relationships and discourse that were considered
here. Is emotional understanding influenced
to a greater extent by patterns of family interaction than the development of the ability
to grasp the links between thoughts, beliefs,
and action? The relation between these two
aspects of social understanding deserves further study.
The final point raised by the analysis of
the ratings concerns the links found between mother-sibling interaction and the
children's social cognitive sophistication.
Children who grew up in families in which
their mothers engaged in relatively frequent
controlling behavior with the older sibling
were more likely to be able to give explanations in the false belief task; they also
tended to be better at affective labeling and
perspective taking if their mothers had been
highly responsive and affectionate with the
sibling than children whose mothers and
siblings were not involved in this way.
These results alert us to the importance of
recognizing that children grow up as family
members, and that the salient influences on
children's development include more than
the behavior or language directed directly to
them. Children are extremely interested in
what happens between their siblings and
their parents, monitoring closely both the
language (Dunn & Shatz, 1989) and the emotions expressed (Dunn & Kendrick, 1982;
Dunn & Munn, 1985). It is of course highly
adaptive for children who are born into a
social groupthe familyto attend to and
begin to make sense of the interaction between those other family members early in
their own development. The findings of the
present study remind us that the appropriate

framework in which we should study developmental influences is that of the family,

rather than solely that of a parent-child dyad.
Promising next steps in the investigation of
individual differences in understanding others will be to examine in more detail the
nature of interaction between siblings implicated, to clarify which particular aspects of
discourse about others are most important,
to pursue the issue of gender differences in
early understanding of other people, and to
conduct longitudinal studies to explore the
prognostic significance of these early differences in understanding other minds.
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