小学生における物語文の読解パターンと「心の理論」の関連性

Abstract

The present study investigated the relationships between two patterns of reading comprehension in narrative stories and development of "theory of mind" in elementary school children. It was hypothesized that 1) there were significant age (grade) differences in global reading comprehension but not in local reading comprehension, and 2) the levels of understanding of "theory of mind" had a significant influence on global reading comprehension but not on local reading comprehension. The participants were 83 fourth grade, 74 fifth grade, and 98 sixth grade children from an elementary school. Two stories were used to test the children's levels of understanding of global and local reading comprehension abilities. The second-order false belief task (Perner & Wimmer, 1985) and the commitment task (Mant & Perner, 1998) were administered to assess children's levels of "theory of mind". It was found that there are significant age differences in the global reading comprehension tests, but not in the local reading comprehension tests, and that children who passed the second-order false belief task got higher points in the global reading comprehension tests than those who did not. However, there was no such difference in the commitment task.