Influence of exposure to children’s movies on television on theory-of- mind acquisition in preschoolers

Abstract

Recently cases of harness which is conducted by children indicated that decrease capability of children understanding against other's mental states Children’s ability to grasp other’s mental states (theory of mind) is important in the context of socialization. Previous research has not investigated the duration in measuring the exposure of narrative media (children's movies on television), which is one of the impacts on the acquisition of ToM. The movie on television represents the relations between children and their mental state. This study aims to investigate the influence of exposure to children’s movies on television towards children's ToM acquisition among preschoolers. ToM was assessed using a ToM scale by Wellman and Liu, and exposure to children’s movies on television was measured with a questionnaire. The study has been conducted to 85 preschoolers ages 3–5 years old/36-71 months ((M = 4.88 SD = 0,683), with the involvement of their parents to fill the questionnaires. The result of this study shows that exposure to children's movies on television does not significantly influence children’s ToM. The strong relations between the two is considered false belief (FB) since the result of the study shows that.