Abstract

DOMINGUES, Simone Ferreira da Silva. The use of scaling of theory of mind tasks in brazilian research. Bol. psicol [online]. 2015, vol.65, n.143, pp. 229-242. ISSN 0006-5943.

Theory of Mind refers to the cognitive ability to attribute mental states to self and others. Wellman and Liu organized a theory of mind scale to assess the development of this ability that is composed by 7 tasks, arranged in ascending order of difficulty. This literature review aims to identify Brazilian studies that used this scale and to verify if the theory of mind developmental pattern observed by them is also found among Brazilian children. We identified 13 studies, including articles, dissertations and theses published since 2007. Analysis of them suggested that there is much variation in the scale administration in Brazilian studies and in children's performance. In some studies children had better performance in more difficult tasks than in easier tasks, suggesting that the difficulty order proposed is not appropriate to Brazilian children. However, due to methodological issues of these studies, there is not enough evidence to conclude that the theory of mind pattern development is significantly different in Brazilian children or that tasks' order of difficulty is not the same. Thus, the current study can only explain some frailties and point out future directions for research

Keywords : Theory of mind; theory of mind scale; sociocognitive development.

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