Investigating the Theoretical and Instructional Relations Between Theory of Mind and Reading Comprehension

Abstract

Research on Theory of Mind (ToM) and reading comprehension is a lively and active field with numerous publications a year. ToM describes a child’s ability to identify and reason about the mental states of others (e.g., think, believe, intend, want). The burgeoning findings from this research suggests ToM plays an important role in the reading comprehension outcomes of narrative texts, specifically through the linguistic comprehension domain of the Simple View of Reading (SVR) by supporting inference making. Despite the converging findings, however, the research field has yet to translate the research into practice. The purpose of the research in the present dissertation is to offer the Theory of Mind and reading comprehension research field a glimpse into how we can translate the research into practice and to recount the effects of my efforts. The overall aim of the present dissertation is to explain how ToM contributes to narrative reading comprehension as a skill of social inference making.The present dissertation is structured into five parts consisting of an introduction that outlines the dissertation and establishes the theoretical frame (Chapter 1), a synthesis of quantitative studies on the relation between ToM and reading comprehension (Chapter 2), a mixed method descriptive analysis of secondary data of preschool teachers’ interactive read alouds (Chapter 3, Study 1), an intervention study focused on using ToM to teach theme identification (Chapter 4, Study 2), and a conclusion (Chapter 5). The findings from the synthesis reveal a small and mediated relation via listening comprehension between ToM (almost solely measured using false-belief tasks) and reading comprehension and point to the explanatory power of second order and advanced ToM, specifically. Additionally, only one intervention study was included in the literature corpus for the synthesis. The findings from Study 1 suggest that preschool teachers use ToM language, defined as references to mental states, during their interaction read aloud instruction and that such use supports comprehension. The findings from Study 2 indicate that situating ToM, as a skill of social inference making during dialogic reading activities, combined with explicit instruction on theme identification is an effective method of increasing the narrative comprehension of less-skilled comprehenders. The results of the dissertation as a whole help clarify how ToM functions within the linguistic comprehension domain as a skill of social inference, making for narrative comprehension in conjunction with other known variables of reading comprehension. In sum, the present dissertation offers the ToM and reading comprehension research field an applied investigation of ToM. The present dissertation is the first of its kind in this endeavor. Limitations and future research directions are also discussed.