Teaching as a natural cognition and its relations to preschoolers' developing theory of mind

Teaching is an important aspect in people's lives and cultures. We explore it from a cognitive-developmental perspective. Teaching may be a natural cognition that, despite its complexity, is learned at an early age without any apparent instruction. We propose that theory of mind may be an important cognitive prerequisite for teaching. We briefly describe a study that tested relations between children's developing theory of mind and actual teaching. Children at the ages of 3- and 5-years were presented new theory of mind tasks about teaching and then were observed teaching peers a game they had just learned. We found corresponding age-related differences in children's understanding of teaching as manifested in their performance on the teaching-theory of mind tasks and in their teaching strategies. It is suggested that theory and research on theory of mind might need to be expanded to include on-line, interactive situations such as teaching. (C) 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Inc.