子どもの心的理解の発達を支えるものとは : 養育者の敏感性及びmind-mindednessの役割

Abstract

It has been reported that the understanding of the internal world is evolved and achieved in a child's context of social relationships. Especially, it is accepted that the relationship with parents in infancy has a central function in the development of mind- understanding. In this paper, I first review various studies on early social relationships and the child's performance of mind-understanding such as 'theory of mind' tasks. Second, I describe the importance of the interaction, which a parent focuses on the infant's mental state. Then I point out two kinds of parent's roles; "sensitivity"--the ability to read and interpret an infant's mental state appropriately, and "mind-mindedness"--the proclivity to attribute an internal state to the infant and to treat him/her as an individual with a mind of his/her own. Finally, I suggest the requirement of an empirical investigation to reveal how each of them can contribute towards the infant's development.