Interpretive Diversity Understanding, Parental Practices, and Contextual Factors Involved in Primary School-age Children's Cheating and Lying Behavior

Dishonesty is an interpersonal process that relies on sophisticated socio-cognitive mechanisms embedded in a complex network of individual and contextual factors. The present study examined parental rearing practices, bilingualism, socioeconomic status, and children's interpretive diversity understanding (i.e., the ability to understand the constructive nature of the human mind) in relation to their cheating and lie-telling behavior. 196 school-age children (9-11 years old) participated in a novel trivia game-like temptation resistance paradigm to elicit dishonesty and to verify their interpretive diversity understanding. Results revealed that children's decision to cheat and lie was positively associated with their understanding of the constructive nature of the human mind and with parental rejection. Children with rejective parents were more likely to lie compared to their counterparts. This may suggest that understanding social interactions and the relationship with caregivers can impact children's cheating behavior and the extent to which they are willing to deceive about it. Understanding the constructive nature of the mind was also a positive predictor of children's ability to maintain their lies. Finally, being bilingual and having a higher socioeconomic status positively predicted children's deception, these intriguing results warranting further research into the complex network of deception influences.

"Deep Dive into the Constructive Mind: Relating Interpretive Diversity Understanding to Anxiety Symptoms and Parental Practices in Middle Childhood"

The relation between the understanding of the mind as being constructive, anxiety, and parental factors is not fully elucidated. Interpretive diversity understanding represents an understanding that people can have a different interpretation of the same situation due to differences in beliefs, attitudes, and knowledge. We aim to bring together two approaches to this concept: the interpretive theory of mind (ToMi), and the constructivist theory of mind (ToMc) and relate them to anxiety symptoms and parental practices during middle childhood (8-12 years). In two studies, we used a restricted view paradigm to assess ToMi, a questionnaire to assess ToMc (the Constructivist Theory of Mind Interview, short written version in Study 1, and extended interview in Study 2) and parental and child reports of parental practices, as well as children’s anxiety symptoms. Results revealed that the two interpretive diversity understanding tasks were positively associated (Study 2). Overall, warm parental practices were positively associated with ToM tasks and a significant predictor for the ToMc interview answers. On the other hand, parental rejection and overprotection were negatively associated with performance on the ToMi task, with the ToMc score and positively with anxiety symptoms. Understanding the relationship between ToM, anxiety, and parental practices is essential for preventing early social and emotional difficulties during middle childhood.

Interpretive theory of mind and empathic prosocial moral reasoning

Theory of mind (ToM) is seen as fundamental in development of social understanding. The study proposes that interpretive theory of mind (iToM), which follows ToM attainment, underlies important shifts towards mature social understanding. With ToM found to predict the needs orientation in prosocial moral reasoning (PMR), we hypothesized that iToM, unlike ToM, would account for PMR orientations requiring empathic reasoning. Those with iToM recognize the role of subjective processes, such as interpretation, in knowing. They can invoke others' subjective processes, not just their physical perspectives, in explaining others' decisions. A study with 225 7- to 11-year-old children (M_age  = 9.04, SD = 0.91) found that iToM, but not ToM, predicted empathic and internalized values PMR orientations when controlling for age, emotion understanding and inhibitory control. These findings show that iToM attainment plays a unique role in developing social understanding such as reflected in empathic reasoning-based PMR orientations.

Changing minds: Children's inferences about third party belief revision

By the age of 5, children explicitly represent that agents can have both true and false beliefs based on epistemic access to information (e.g., Wellman, Cross, & Watson, 2001). Children also begin to understand that agents can view identical evidence and draw different inferences from it (e.g., Carpendale & Chandler, 1996). However, much less is known about when, and under what conditions, children expect other agents to change their minds. Here, inspired by formal ideal observer models of learning, we investigate children's expectations of the dynamics that underlie third parties' belief revision. We introduce an agent who has prior beliefs about the location of a population of toys and then observes evidence that, from an ideal observer perspective, either does, or does not justify revising those beliefs. We show that children's inferences on behalf of third parties are consistent with the ideal observer perspective, but not with a number of alternative possibilities, including that children expect other agents to be influenced only by their prior beliefs, only by the sampling process, or only by the observed data. Rather, children integrate all three factors in determining how and when agents will update their beliefs from evidence.

Sibling composition, executive function, and children's thinking about mental diversity

Prior investigations of relations between sibling composition and theory of mind have focused almost exclusively on false belief understanding in children 6 years of age and younger. The current work expands previous research by examining whether sibling composition predicts 4- to 11-year-olds' (N=192) more advanced mental state reasoning on interpretive theory of mind tasks. Even when controlling for age and executive function, children with a greater number of older siblings or with more same-sex siblings demonstrated stronger knowledge in both their predictions and explanations that people with different past experiences can have diverse interpretations of ambiguous stimuli. These data provide some of the first documentation of sibling constellations that predict individual differences in theory of mind during middle childhood.

Beyond Sally's missing marble: further development in children's understanding of mind and emotion in middle childhood

Research on the development of theory of mind (ToM), the understanding of people in relation to mental states and emotions, has been a vibrant area of cognitive development research. Because the dominant focus has been addressing when children acquire a ToM, researchers have concentrated their efforts on studying the emergence of psychological understanding during infancy and early childhood. Here, the benchmark test has been the false-belief task, the awareness that the mind can misrepresent reality. While understanding false belief is a critical milestone achieved by the age of 4 or 5, children make further advances in their knowledge about mental states and emotions during middle childhood and beyond. Thus, a comprehensive understanding of children's sociocognitive abilities in older age groups is necessary to understand more fully the course of ToM development. The aim of this review is to outline continued development in ToM during middle childhood. In particular, we focus on children's understanding of interpretation-that different minds can construct different interpretations of the same reality. Additionally, we consider children's growing understanding of how mental states (thoughts, emotions, decisions) derive from personal experiences, cohere across time, and interconnect (e.g., thoughts shape emotions). We close with a discussion of the surprising paucity of studies investigating individual differences in ToM beyond age 6. Our hope is that this chapter will invigorate empirical interest in moving the pendulum toward the opposite research direction-toward exploring strengths, limitations, variability, and persistent errors in developing theories of mind across the life span.

Interpretive understanding, sympathy, and moral emotion attribution in oppositional defiant disorder symptomatology

This study examined the relations between interpretive understanding, sympathy, and moral emotion attribution (MEA) in the prediction of oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) symptomatology in an ethnically diverse sample of 128 4- and 8-year-old children (49 % girls). Caregivers rated the children's ODD symptoms. Interpretive understanding was assessed using an advanced theory-of-mind task. Sympathy was measured via caregiver- and child-report. Strength of MEA was assessed utilizing the children's responses to six hypothetical moral transgressions. Results revealed that interpretive understanding, sympathy, and strength of MEA in the exclusion domain predicted ODD symptoms negatively. Caregiver-reported sympathy partially mediated and moderated the relation between interpretive understanding and ODD symptoms. Strength of MEA in the rule violation domain moderated the relation between interpretive understanding and ODD symptoms. The findings shed light on the importance of social-cognitive and affective-moral antecedents of ODD symptoms.

Associations between social understanding, sibling relationship quality, and siblings' conflict strategies and outcomes

Sibling relationship quality and social understanding (second-order false belief, conflict interpretation, and narrative conflict perspective references) were examined as unique and interactive correlates of sibling conflict behavior in 62 dyads (older M age = 8.39 years and younger M age = 6.06 years). High-quality relationships were associated with positive conflict processes. Younger siblings' second-order false belief scores were negatively associated with constructive conflict strategies, and older siblings' narrative self-referential focus was negatively associated with compromise. Associations between younger children's social understanding (conflict interpretation and narrative perspective references) and siblings' dyadic conflict behavior were moderated by relationship quality. Results suggest that links between social understanding and conflict behavior should be considered in conjunction with the quality of children's relationships.

Training Parents to Mediate Sibling Disputes Affects Children's Negotiation and Conflict Understanding

The effects of training parents to use formal mediation procedures in sibling disputes were examined in 48 families with 5- to 10-years-old children, randomly assigned to mediation and control conditions. Children whose parents were trained in mediation were compared with those whose parents intervened normally. Parents reported that children used more constructive conflict resolution strategies, compromised more often, and controlled the outcomes of conflicts more often in mediation families than in control families. Observations indicated less negativity in children's independent negotiations of recurrent conflicts, better understanding of the role of interpretation in assessing blame, and better knowledge of their siblings' perspectives in the mediation group. Thus, both social and social-cognitive gains resulted from experience with constructive conflict resolution.

How siblings resolve their conflicts: the importance of first offers, planning, and limited opposition

Sixty-four sibling dyads (4-12 years old; 61% males; 83% European-American) were asked to resolve an ongoing conflict. Older siblings provided leadership by suggesting, modifying, justifying, and requesting assent to plans for conflict resolution. Younger siblings countered and disagreed, but also contributed to planning and agreed to their siblings' plans. Compromises were associated with first offers that met both children's goals, future-oriented planning, and limited opposition. Win-loss outcomes followed offers favoring only one child and arguments over older siblings' plans. Conflicts were unresolved when negotiations included frequent accusations and opposition, but little planning. Thus mutually beneficial conflict resolution required that children shift focus from debating past wrongs to developing plans to meet their unrealized goals in future interaction.