Abstract

MENEZES, Aline Beckmann de Castro; CRUZ, Marilu Michelly da Silva; CORREA, Hellen Vivianni Veloso  and  BRITO, Regina. Perception and development of Theory of Mind Reasoning in Asurini children, from Amazonia, Brazil. Rev. etol. [online]. 2014, vol.13, n.2, pp.30-37. ISSN 1517-2805.

Theory of Mind (ToM) approaches the ability to understand the possibility that even if one individual thinks something, another individual may think it differently. ToM is essential to socialization and it is developed around the age of 5 years. Most studies on the subject were made with children from industrialized societies instead of being made with children from traditional ethnic societies. This study aims to provide ToM developmental data from a sample of indigenous ethnicity - Asurini ethnicity. A sample of 35 children aged 2-10 years took part in this research. They were individually presented to a standard false-content task. The results did not indicate that 5 years is a marker of ToM in all children, this ability was manifested in children with age of 3 (25%) to 9 years (67%), and in all participants aged 10. This variation could be related to typical environmental and ecological arrangements of the ethnicity.

Keywords : Theory of Mind; traditional ethnic societies; false-belief tasks.

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