False-belief training improves preschoolers' theory of mind scores but the review reports it has no effect on language skills¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · associational r1 · q1
Currency · newest study 2018 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q1 i? The article reports, citing Hale and Tager-Flusberg (2003), that false-belief training contributed to better TOM scores but had no effect on language skills. → Biscevic 2018

Evidence¶

Biscevic 2018¶

Biscevic, I., Pasalic, A., & Memisevic, H. (2018). The effects of executive functions and theory of mind on semantic fluency in preschool children. Problems of Education in the 21st Century, 76(1). https://www.scientiasocialis.lt/pec/ doi:10.33225/pec/18.76.21

q1 · i? · associational · r1

This is a second-hand citation narrated in the article's discussion of whether TOM training generalizes to language; the reviewed study's design is not described here and its result is attributed exactly as the article attributes it.

"One such study by Hale and Tager-Flusberg (2003) showed that false-belief training contributes to better TOM scores but has no effect on language skills."

Studies bearing on this claim¶

Does training executive function or theory of mind in early childhood improve language and literacy? This table gathers the studies behind this claim and the 1 narrower claims that bear on it: 2 distinct studies (1 associational, 1 causal), q1–q3, 0 of 2 with an effect size coded. One row per study, codes as each entry records them; no effect is averaged and no verdict is drawn. Built by scripts/synthesize_claim.py from eval/synthesis/; a row that looks wrong is fixed on the claim it comes from.

Discussion¶

Learner Variables¶

• Oral Language — outcome: instruction changes it

Related Claims¶

• High-quality pretend play is an important facilitator of perspective taking and later abstract thought — related
• Reading fiction gives at most a very small gain on theory-of-mind and social-cognition tasks, and the single-passage literary-fiction effect did not replicate — related
• Infants and adults automatically take account of others' false beliefs, as shown by looking time and reaction time — related
• Explicit mentalizing (false-belief understanding) emerges robustly between ages 4 and 6 — related
• DCCS training in preschoolers transfers to false-belief understanding — related