Okuzeka
Child Development & Early Education vocabulary · Cognitive Development

Theory of mind

Meaning in child development & early education, with examples

nounCommon term

In child development & early education, theory of mind means: The understanding that other people have their own thoughts, feelings, beliefs and knowledge, which may be different from yours.

In Turkish: zihin kuramı

How it is used

A research term often tested with false-belief tasks such as the Sally-Anne test, which most children pass at around four years of age. It is linked with empathy, pretend play and social skills.

Example sentences

  1. Hide-and-seek gets more interesting once children develop a theory of mind.

  2. The study compared theory of mind in bilingual and monolingual preschoolers.

Common collocations

  • develop a theory of mind
  • false-belief task
  • Sally-Anne test
  • theory of mind skills
  • empathyThe ability to understand and share how another person feels, for example noticing that a friend is sad and offering comfort.
  • egocentrismIn Piaget's theory, a young child's difficulty in seeing a situation from another person's point of view; it is a normal feature of thinking, not selfishness.
  • pretend playPlay in which children imagine and act out situations, use one object to stand for another, or take on roles, such as feeding a doll or using a block as a phone.
  • executive functionA group of mental skills that help us plan, focus, remember instructions, control impulses and switch between tasks.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Cognitive Development

Practise with graded reading

Reading at the right level is the fastest way to make new words stick. Pick free English books by level: