Abstract: Despite the overall consensus that language plays a significant role in development of children’s theory of mind (ToM), it remains controversial with regard to the particular aspects of language that may play such roles. Astington et al. (1999) and de Villiers (2002) proposed that mental verbs and sentential complement, which provide a necessary format for children to deal with false beliefs, facilitate children’s performance in ToM related tasks. In contrast, Harris (1999) and nelson (2004) emphasized the importance of linguistic interchange process which conveys information that is essential for the development of ToM. Due to the presence of a large number of mental verbs and sentential complement in Chinese language, the purpose of this study was to examine how mental verbs and sentential complement, in comparison to linguistic interchange process, may be relate to development of ToM among Chinese young children.
The participants were 77 children (M age = 4 years, 37 girls), pre-selected based on two criteria: (1) their performance in a standardized language task fell within age-specific norms; and (2) all failed in an appearance-reality task prior to the experiment. Using a pretest-posttest control group design, the children were randomly assigned to three experimental groups (i.e., sentential complement with mental verb + deception training, situation interchange + deception training, and sentential complement with mental verb training only) and one control group. The ToM posttests were conducted one week after the pretests.
The results showed that all the three experimental groups exhibited significantly higher posttest than pretest scores, as well as higher posttest scores than did the control group. The results of ANOVA indicated that the group differences in ToM posttest scores can be largely attributed to the group differences in children’s performance on an appearance- reality task. The comparisons among the three experimental groups showed that the sentential complement with mental verb + deception training group had higher posttest ToM scores than did the other two groups (p < .05), whereas no differences were found between the situation interchange + deception training group and the sentential complement with mental verb training only group.
Compared to linguistic interchange processes, mental verbs and sentential complement in Chinese language may play a stronger role in development of ToM among young children. Early experience of deception may also contribute to development of ToM, suggesting a combination of both mental verbs and sentential complement and deception may maximize the training effect on young Chinese children’s ToM

Key words: mental verbs, sentential complement, deception, theory of mind