Abstract: Language skills play an important role in the development of theory of mind in children. According to de Villiers’ point, complement syntax is a prerequisite of false belief understanding, because it provides a powerful framework for children’s representation of false belief state. Some other researchers questioned this point.
The purpose of the present study was to examine the influence of complement syntax on false belief understanding in Chinese preschoolers. The hypotheses were (1) according to de Villiers, providing the complement syntax framework including a mental verb could improve the performance on false belief tasks, (2) the special syntax cues could have different influence on unexpected content tasks and location transferred tasks, despite their similar influence on prediction questions and explanation questions in false belief tasks.
A total of one hundred and twenty-four 3- or 4-year-old preschoolers were administered with four false belief tasks. Each age group was divided into three subgroups, in which three types of special syntax cues were manipulated. These syntax-cuing conditions were called zero level, first level and second level cuing, respectively. The participants were not given any syntax cue in the zero level subgroup; the first level subgroup was given a partial syntax cue, such as “where did the boy (a character in the false belief story) think the chocolate was?” The second level subgroup was given a fully syntax cue, such as “the boy thinks that the chocolate was in the cupboard”. In each false belief task, the participants were asked a prediction question as well as an explanation question. They obtained one score if they answered one question correctly.
The results showed that the performance of the false belief tasks in the first and second level syntax-cuing conditions was significantly better than the performance in the zero level condition; however, there was no significant difference between the first and the second level conditions. There was also no significant difference of the syntax-cuing effects between location transferred task and unexpected content task. A similar pattern was found when comparing the performance on prediction questions with the performance on explanation questions. This indicated that the special syntax cues significantly facilitated children’s false belief understanding. Finally, the role of the special syntax on the false belief understanding was discussed

Key words: False belief, Theory of mind, Special syntax cues