Page No.329-336
Bhaswati Patnaik
National Institute of Technology, Rourkela, Orissa
The awareness regarding mental life of self and others is a significant
developmental milestone in children’s early years of life. As social interaction is
virtually an interaction of minds, children, after theory of mind development, are
able to participate more meaningfully in their social and cultural environment.
As evident from empirical studies, this specific acquisition of children has
implications for their socio- emotional growth in later life. Hence, significant
departure from the normative age of its development can adversely affect children’s
effective coping with complex social interaction. How children learn in classrooms,
how they communicate, how they make friends , how they make sense of
important verbal and non-verbal transactions in everyday life….all these and
many more, share significant relationships with children’s theory of mind
development. Research also indicates that the pragmatic and communicative
deficiencies, that are central to the disorder of autism, are attributable to autistic
children’s inability to understand the mental world. When children are able to
think recursively by attributing second and higher-order mental states, their
understanding of social life becomes richer and more meaningful. Apart from
specific classroom implications like peer tutoring and collaborative learning,
theory of mind development has implications for children’s ability to think critically,
their episodic memory and their development of self-concept. The present paper
discusses the concept of theory of mind, its development and implications of
children’s recursive thinking for Educational, School and Instructional practices