Contação de histórias na Educação Infantil e Teoria da Mente: um estudo de intervenção com atribuição de estados mentais com crianças de 3 a 5 anos

Abstract

The ability to attribute mental states to other people, that is, understanding their emotions, intentions, thoughts, feelings, desires and beliefs is called Theory of Mind, this ability is fundamental to establish social relationships and its development during the first years of life. This intervention research aimed to investigate the influence of storytelling activities promoted by preschool teachers, in children’s performance on Theory of Mind tasks and its development. The research was made in a private school in Itapecerica da Serra, in São Paulo; Three teachers and forty children between 3 and 5 years old took part of the study. The following design was carried out: a) Pre – test: seven theory of mind tasks of the Theory of Mind task scale were applied to kids; b) Teacher training: a theoretical and practical training was applied to the teachers, using a guidelines on how to tell stories attributing mental states to characters; c) Intervention: each teacher told each age group four stories repeating three times according to the researcher's guidelines, into a period of 12 days. d) Post – test: The same tasks used in the pre - test were reapplied. The results shows that the performance of children in the Theory of Mind tasks occurred in a developmental way, that is, after the interventions, the general results of the tasks shows that group A (3 years old) obtained 58% of correct answers, group B (4 years old), obtained 70% of correct answers and the group C (5 years old) obtained 85% of correct answers. Concerning the difficulties, in all classes, the tasks of false belief (Task 4) and the task of apparent real emotion (Task 7) were the most difficult and least successful by the children. The instructions given to the teachers about how telling stories emphasizing the mental states of the characters were appropriate, since all the groups, after the interventions, had kids performing significantly better. Habitual situations in school environments such as storytelling may favor the development of the child's Theory of Mind, therefore it is important that teacher trainings in this area, as well as intervention researches, in order to favor this social skill