• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.397-417
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• 2008

We applied fMRI to examine brain activation during false-belief task in Korean healthy adults. In the first experiment, brain areas including bilateral precuneus, temoporo-parietal junction, left inferior parietal lobule, posterior cingulate, middle frontal gyrus were found during first -order false-belief task. In the second experiment, the left middle frontal gyrus, medial frontal gyrus and right precuneus, middle frontal gyrus, temoporo-parietal junction were activated during second-order false-belief task. These results are compatible with the suggestions that the ways in which adults understand theory of mind stories are universal.

• Korean Journal of Culture and Social Issue
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.1-18
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• 2008

The present study was to investigate the developmental change of adolescent's theory of mind. In addition, the relations between theory of mind and the social competence were investigated. Sixty students in each the 6th and 8th grade group were participated in this study. Adolescents' understanding of mind were measured by four kinds of mindreading tasks; the second-order false belief tasks, understanding the ambiguous social behaviors tasks, understading the hidden meaning of a figurative statement tasks, and the "faux pas" tasks. Social skills were measured by social skill scales. Eighth graders performed better than the 6th graders on the understanding the ambiguous social behaviors tasks and faux pas tasks but not on the second-order false belief tasks and understanding the hidden meaning of figurative statement tasks. The results suggests that the mindreading ability continues to develop during the adolescence, especially the ability to interpret others' ambiguous social behaviors by reading their mental states and the ability to understand that a person says a faux pas it is due to a mistaken belief. In addition, the understanding the ambiguous social behaviors tasks was found to be the best task to predict social behaviors. The results suggests that the mindreading ability would be a significant explanatory factor on social competence.

• Korean Journal of Child Studies
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.257-273
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• 2008

This study examined the development of children's theory of mind by types of false-belief tasks and various mental states. Seventy six 3-, 4-, 5- and 6-year olds were asked to infer others' minds or choose other's behaviors. Ten tasks, including two picture book tasks, were used to tap the children's understanding of various mental states. Results showed that children did well in their understanding of diverse perception and desire, but they did poorly in emotional inference based on false-belief, and second order false-belief. Children performed better in picture book tasks than in classical tasks for the understanding of false-belief and false-belief based emotion.

• Korean Journal of Child Studies
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• v.36 no.5
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• pp.135-153
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• 2015

The purpose of this study was to investigate false belief understanding and justification reasoning according to information of reality amongst children aged 3, 4 and 5. Children aged 3 to 5 years (N = 176) participated in this study. Each child was interviewed individually and responded to questions designed to measure his/her false belief understanding. Every child responded to the false belief task under two different information conditions of reality(reality known vs reality unknown). For more specific analysis, children's reasoning responses were also recorded. The major findings of this study are as follows. Children could understand false belief more easily under reality unknown conditions. Specifically, the influences of information conditions were crucial to 3-year-olds but not to 4- and 5-year-olds. Although 3 year olds were able to avoid the systematical errors inherent in the false belief task, they still did not understand the false belief itself. This study provides specific aspects of false belief understanding and its relevance to general changes in cognitive development.

• Korean Journal of Child Studies
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.103-113
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• 2008

This study examined the difference in children's performance between two types of task by the number of protagonists and children's implicit understanding of false-belief. The implicit measure by eye gaze was contrasted with children's explicit answers to the experimenter's question about where the protagonist would look for an object. Results showed there was no difference according to the task type by number of protagonists. On false-belief, 2- and 3-year-olds showed low performance compared with 4-year-olds on explicit responses. On implicit responses, 3- and 4-year-olds out-performed 2-year-olds. These results suggest that implicit understanding precedes explicit understanding.

• Korean Journal of Childcare and Education
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• v.8 no.5
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• pp.179-202
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• 2012

This study examined the relationship among children's theory of mind, social skills, and emotional intelligence. A total of 76 five-year old children in the Seoul area participated in this study. Children were tested on three different type of theory of mind tasks and teachers rated their children's emotional intelligence and social competency. SPSS 18, t-test, correlation analysis, and step-wise of multilateral regression were performed for data collection. The results were as follows: First, 40.8% of participants passed the task of theory of mind. There were significant differences in total score of theory of mind, social competence skills, and emotional intelligence between successors and failures. Second, by gender, there were significant differences in total score of theory of mind, social competence skills, and emotional intelligence. Third, there was a relationship between theory of mind and social competence skills, social competence skills and emotional intelligence, and theory of mind and emotional intelligence.