YOUNG CHILDREN’S METACOGNITIVE ABILITY

OF INTROSPECTION

A REVIEW OF YOUNG CHILDREN’S METACOGNITIVE

ABILITY OF INTROSPECTION

( Volume on Theories of Mind in Early Childhood Education, Contemporary

perspectives on research in theories of mind in early childhood education.)

Dr Eleonora Papaleontiou - Louca

European University Cyprus

and

Dr Niki Thoma

School Psychologist

Introduction

Metacognition refers to one’s knowledge concerning one’s own cognitive

processes or anything related to them (Flavell, 1976), and to the awareness of

one’s thinking (Salmon &Lucas, 2011), while theory of mind is the

“understanding children have of their own and others’ minds and of the

relation between the mind and the world. This understanding enables

children to predict and explain actions by ascribing mental states, such as

beliefs, desires and intentions to themselves and to other people” (Astington,

1991 p. 158).

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Therefore, theory of mind is an area of developmental psychology, which by

default involves a reference to mental states. It also enables one to understand

that mental states can be the cause of - and thus be used to explain and

predict-others’ behavior.

A great deal of research has been done during the past 3 decades on

children’s theory of mind and their acquisition of knowledge about the mental

world (for reviews see Baron-Cohen, Tager-Flusberg, & Cohen, 2000; Flavell

& Miller, 1998; Wellman, 2002; and Wellman & Gelman, 1998). This

research shows that some understanding of thinking is already present during

the preschool years and that a great deal more accrues during the elementary

school years (Flavell, 1999). As we shall see below this has been shown to

also happen earlier.

More recently, within the literature of theory of mind there have been

many studies trying to investigate young children’s ability to introspect.

‘Introspection’, as described below, consists of one basic ability of young

children’s theory of mind:

“Introspection is an instance of reflective consciousness because it consists

of reflecting on, and perhaps also verbally reporting on, primary-conscious

mental events construed as mental events by the reflecting person” (Flavell,,

Green & Flavell 1995, p.741).

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Introspective abilities in young children are of great interest because of their

relation to children’s ability to notice and reflect on their own mental states

and experiences and, consequently, attribute such states and experience to

others; that is, to their ability to develop a theory of mind.

In our everyday folk psychological understanding of our own and others’

actions, we usually realize that we are able both to refer to and to control our

thoughts, beliefs, desires (Estes, 1998). Therefore, we believe that as adults

and older children we are generally aware both of the fact that we think and of

our ability to monitor our mental procedures. What is interesting to learn

though, is how and when we begin having this awareness during childhood

(Young, 2008).

Young Children’s Introspective Abilities and Basic Deficiencies

Since Piaget’s early work and even from more recent research, young

children have been considered as having little or no awareness of their mental

activity.

More specifically, Piaget’s early studies (1928/1976, 1929/1979) suggested

that young children are basically incapable of introspection and that they tend

to acquire basic introspective skills gradually during elementary-school years.

One of Piaget’s early conclusions on this issue was: We may say in

conclusion that up to the age of 7, children’s introspection seems to be

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completely absent, and that from 7-8 until 11-12 there is a consistent effort on

the part of the child to become more and more conscious of itself (Piaget,

1928/1976).

“As a defining characteristic, theory of mind tasks are about one’s own or

another’s thought or belief (Guajardo & Turley-Ames, 2004, p.74). ... And as

we know, “between 3 and 5 years of age children develop skills to consider

their own and others’ thoughts and feelings”. (p.76).

So, within this theoretical framework, Flavell, Green & Flavell (1993,

1995b) have studied 3-5 yr-olds understanding of thinking and

concluded that children of that age understand basic things about thinking:

More specifically, preschoolers know that thinking is an activity that only

people and perhaps some other animals engage in; that thinking is a private,

internal procedure and that mental entities like thoughts and images are

internal, in-the-head affairs, not to be confused with physical actions or other

external objects and events; they also regard the mind and the brain as

necessary for mental actions; they realize that like desires and other mental

entities, thinking has content and makes reference, and that thoughts can take

as their objects nonpresent and even nonreal things. Thus, preschoolers

understand some of the most basic and important facts about thinking:

namely, that it is an internal human activity that refers to or represents real or

imaginary things. Finally, they have some ability to infer the presence of

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thinking in another person provided that the cues are very strong and clear,

and they can also differentiate thinking from other activities in such situations

(Flavell, 1999).

More specifically, Flavell et al., (1995b) designed four studies to assess

especially young children’s introspective abilities. In those studies, the

experimenters used a common strategy, i.e. they presented children with some

stimulus intended to provoke some kind of thoughts and immediately after

that questioned the children about their thoughts.

Commenting on three- and four-year-old children’s introspective abilities

Flavell et al. (1995b, p.81-82) stated that “pre-schoolers tend to be very poor

at recalling or reconstructing both the fact and the content of their own

thinking, even in situations designed to facilitate introspection. In contrast,

children of 7 or 8 years of age proved to be much better than 5-year-olds at

such introspection tasks” (see later in this paper for discussion of the

relationship between language and metacognitive/ introspective abilities).

In particular, Flavell, Green & Flavell (1995b) found that 5-year-olds were

poor at reporting what they had been thinking of or what they had been

thinking about, despite some good efforts on the part of the experimenters to

make the process of thinking clearer to the children. Generally, they are poor

at identifying when someone is thinking or what they might be thinking about

(even in the case of their own thoughts).

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In addition to these, “preschoolers were found to be very poor at detecting

the presence of inner speech in themselves when they are engaged in a task

that elicits such speech” (Flavell, Green, Flavell & Grossman, 1997, p.45).

This study found that in contrast to 6-7 yr-olds, 4 yr-olds usually did not infer

that a person silently engaged in verbal mental activities (e.g. reading,

counting) was saying things to him/herself. The authors, therefore, suggest

that 4 yr-olds do lack knowledge and awareness of inner speech and they

rather begin to show such an understanding during the early elementary

school years. For example, Flavell et al. (1995b) found that 7-8 yr-olds were

much better than 5 yr-olds at reporting their recent thoughts (at least some of

which were more verbal), while preschoolers tended to be very poor at

recalling both the fact and the content of their own recent or present thinking.

Siegler (1996) agreed in that elementary school children are quite good at

reporting the strategies they use (when adding, subtracting, telling time and

memorizing number sequences).

It must be kept in mind, of course, that this evidence of developing

metacognitive/ introspective abilities relates closely to language development.

For example Astington and Jenkins (1999) investigated the role of language

in theory of mind development in research that showed that language, as

shown in both syntax and semantics testing, influences developmental change

in the domain of theory of mind as shown in false belief tasks. de Villiers

(2000) showed that three to four- year old children’s linguistic development,

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and especially syntax, and production of oblique complement structures (e.g.

“he said that it was raining”, “she thought the bowl was empty”) predicts

children’s success at false belief tasks. This should not be taken as a causal

relationship, as there is evidence that children possess theory of mind abilities

even before they can express it in words (Malle, 2002).

Young Children’s Understanding of the Stream of Consciousness

Moreover, according to Flavell, Green and Flavell’s (1993, 1995b, 1996)

studies, “preschoolers lack important knowledge related to their own and

other people’s ongoing mental activities: They are largely unaware of the fact

that people experience a continuous flow of thinking” and they “greatly

underestimate the amount of mental activity that goes on in people. They do

not realize that people are continually experiencing mental content of one

kind or another, the ever-flowing “stream of consciousness”…(term initially

used by William James) (Flavell, 1995, p.79).

In other words, preschoolers seem to fail to understand that any kind of

cognitive endeavor goes on in the minds of people who are engaged in

cognitive tasks (such as looking, listening, reading, talking). These findings,

in conjunction with the analysis just described, led Flavell et al. (1995b) to the

following conclusion:

“There are... possible implications for young children’s thought and

behavior regarding themselves as well as others. If, as we claim, they tend

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to be largely incognizant of their own ongoing mentation as well as that of

others, one ought to see signs of it. For example, they should be less likely

than older children and adults to know how they had arrived at a given

decision, judgment, or problem solution because the mental steps leading

up to it... would be less accessible to them” (p. 87).

It seemed, therefore, that there was a tendency for younger children to say

that a person who was just waiting quietly was having “a mind empty of

thoughts and ideas”, or that a waiting person’s mind was “not doing

anything”, something that changed with older children who recognized that a

waiting person was really having “some thoughts and ideas” (Flavell et al.,

1993, p.389).

More specifically, the percentage of mental attribution for a “waiting

person” was: 3-year-olds 5%, 4-year-olds 20%, 6-7-year-olds 55% and adults

95%. Moreover, preschoolers tended to be poor at inferring that something

must be “going on in a person’s mind”, even when that person was known to

be engaged in activities such as looking at something, reading, listening to

something, talking to another person, and, for some younger preschoolers,

even deciding something. As far as the content of the thought of the story’s

character is concerned, it was shown that 5- and 7-year-olds were more likely

to give reasonable, situation-appropriate inferences as to the content of mental

activity, than the 4-year-olds (Flavell et al., 1993).

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Children also appeared to have difficulty in understanding that some

conscious thoughts may occur automatically and be beyond deliberate control.

So, 4-year-old children in Flavell et al.’s (1993) study often said that a person

who wanted to keep his or her mind empty of all ideas for 3 min could do so.

Flavell, Green & Flavell (1998) found older children and adults were more

likely than were 5-year-old children to judge that a person could not go 3days

without thinking about anything.

There is a consensus of the above evidence on the poor performance of

young children’s introspective abilities and we must keep in mind that the

above tasks like the one tried by Flavell (1993) requires significant verbal

ability, analytic ability, episodic memory on the part of the children to

perform successfully on the introspective abilities tests, as shown by Flavell

(1979). However not all studies agree with these findings, as there is a

suspicion that young children’s awareness of their own thinking has been

underestimated.

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Young Children’s Introspective Abilities: Is this the whole story?

Not all researchers agree with Flavell et al. (1995) underestimating

preschoolers’ introspection abilities. A study by Estes, Wellman & Wolley

(1989) suggests that three-and four-yr-olds can provide reports on their own

thought processes and Gopnik and Slaughter (1991) agree that pre-school

children (three and four-yr-olds) appear to be able to introspect.

More specifically, Estes, Wellman and Wolley (1989) seemed to provide

evidence that there is basis in untutored experience to inspire introspective

reports and that the ability to provide such reports must be slowly acquired

through socialization. More specifically, Estes et al. (1989) showed that 4-

and 5- year olds can provide specific descriptions of image transformations:

In their study, Estes et al. (1989) asked children to form a mental image

(“make a picture in your head”) of a familiar object such as a pair of scissors.

Children were then asked whether they could transform this mental image

through thought alone. For example, children were asked, “Just by thinking

real hard, without moving your hands, can you make them (i.e. the scissors)

open and close?” It is notable, that children were easily able to adopt and

utilize the ‘picture in the head’ metaphor to refer to their images. Their

findings showed a rudimentary ability to report and sensibly discuss mental

experiences at a very young age. These data suggested two important points:

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that 3 and 4-year-olds could provide introspective reports on their own

thought processes and that they can learn something about those thought

processes (namely, that it is possible to imagine an object in motion) from

introspection.

Estes et al. (1989, p. 541) in a review of a research program, states:

“... around 4 years of age, children.... have at least a rudimentary capacity

for introspection. In response to adult instructions and questioning, they can

take their own thoughts (in the form of mental images) as objects of reflection

and discussion. And by 5 years of age, some children spontaneously use

mental rotation and have conscious access to this mental process.”

To an objection that introspection is by and large a conventional system of

discourse (Lyons 1986), Estes replies that “young children can refer to and

discuss their own mental states using novel terminology, and before they have

had much opportunity to learn the conventions and language of introspection”

(Estes et al. 1989, p.84).

In a study by Gopnik and Slaughter (1991) less language was used and pre-

school children appeared to be able to introspect. In their study, 3 and 4-year-

olds first entertained one mental state, such as a belief that there were crayons

inside a crayon box. Then the state was changed (i.e., they discovered that

there was something else in the box), and they were asked what they had

thought was in the box before it was opened. The 4-year-olds could report

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their earlier belief, but the 3-year-olds could not, although they could report

some of their earlier mental states that were later changed, such as pretences

and perceptions. Here we can comment that the verbalizations asked of the

children were quite simple (if they thought crayons were inside the box or

not) and so theory of mind and metacognitive abilities in general could be

demonstrated without much expressive verbal ability being involved. This

underlies the abilities of younger children, even of a more implicit nature,

(more implicit than explicit, in the sense of a spectrum between explicit and

implicit metacognitive mental abilities, as proposed by Couchman, Benan,

Coutinho, Boomer, Zakrzewski, Church & Smith, 2012).

Besides, Bartch and Wellman (1995) note that young children are not

completely unable to introspect, but they occasionally report both the fact and

the content of their thinking. Characteristically, they quote a child of only 3

yr-olds, saying: “I’m thinking. I’m thinking of something I like to eat”! (p.

59).

In addition to the above, one form of mental activity to which children seem

to gain early conscious access is visual mental imagery. A more recent

research has shown that preschoolers have a surprisingly sophisticated

understanding of mental imagery. So, according to Estes (1998) “young

children might be also able to demonstrate spontaneous untutored awareness

of this type of thinking” (p. 1346). Indeed, in an Estes’ study (1988) a

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substantial minority of 4 yr-olds and a majority of 5 yr-olds spontaneously

referred to mental activity to explain a mental rotation task performance and

their verbal reports were verified by objective performance measures. It is

worth noting here that these reports occurred without any direct instructions

or questions about thinking, nor with any other use of mental terms by the

side of the experimenter.

There is also evidence that young children may be able to recall their

previous beliefs or other mental states when these states differ from their

present ones (Baron-Cohen, 1991; Gopnik & Astington, 1988; Gopnik &

Slaughter, 1991). Moreover, “they are sometimes able to remember the

epistemic and imaginary origins of their mental representations, for instance

whether they had previously seen or been told something versus having

merely imagined it” (Wolley & Bruell, 1996 in Flavell, Green & Flavell,

2000, p.99).

In another study (Flavell et al., 1997) 5 yr-olds showed some ability to

recognize when they had thought about something by forming a visual image

of it versus having thought about it by saying its name covertly.

Some young children were also found to report how they silently computed

the answer to simple addition problems (Siegler, 1996) and others were able

to report feelings, desires and perceptions (Flavell, 1999).

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A recent study by Kanakogi, Moriguchi & Itakura, (2009) investigated

second-order false-belief tasks in relation to introspection. In second- order

belief tasks the experimenter probes children’s ability to handle the belief of

one person about the belief of another person (e.g. A believes that B

thinks….). Children who passed the second-order false-belief task performed

better on the introspection task than those who failed. This seems to suggest

that second-order mental representation is related to the development of

introspective ability. (Note, however, that the children this study were aged

between 7-9 yrs-old).

As Harris (1995) notes, “young children are gradually acquiring an

understanding of the connectedness of the stream of consciousness” and

“there is a sharp improvement during the pre-school and early school years in

children’s introspective abilities” (p. 102).

Harris (1992) and others, put forward the simulation theory, which proposes

that “we develop theory of mind by using the resources of (our) own mind to

simulate other’s” (Davies & Stone, 1995, page 3). By putting yourself in the

shoes of someone else you can simulate and come to predictions and

explanations.

This is contrary to the older approach of explaining theory of mind

development: “theory theory” states that our understanding of the mind is

based on a folk psychological theory, which consists of a framework of

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concepts, which is “roughly adequate for the demands of everyday life”

(Churchband, 1991, p.51).

Harris et al suggest that:

“children are introspectively aware of their own mental states and

can use this awareness to infer the mental states of other people

through a kind of role-taking or simulation process. For example,

in the false-belief task, children could predict what a naive other

child would think the candy box contained by imagining or

mentally simulating what they themselves would think if they were

in his or her shoes and had only the appearance of the box to go

on. What develops is the ability to make increasingly accurate

simulations of this kind (Flavell ,1999, p.26)

Although not denying that people also use theories when predicting and

explaining others’ behavior, Harris (1992) emphasizes the importance of the

simulation processes in the acquisition of social-cognitive knowledge and

skills. Nevertheless, both ‘theory theorists’ and ‘simulation theorists’ believe

that experience plays an important role, in that it is through practice in role

taking that children improve their simulation and social skills. But see also

the ‘theory-theory’ in writers like Churchland 1991, also modularity theory

e.g. in Baron-Cohen (1994) or Leslie (1987, 1991), where the mechanisms

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which underlie the acquisition of theory of mind are best characterized as

cognitive modules or as developing theories.

In a more recent paper Flavell (1999) agrees that an adequate theory of

children’s knowledge about the mind will finally have to include (among

others):

“that we have some introspective ability that we can and do exploit when

trying to infer the mental states of other creatures who are like ourselves but

in a different psychological situation (e.g. ignorant of the facts, differently

motivated)” (p.27).

Finally, a very recent study (Louca-Papaleontiou, Melhuish & Philaretou,

2012) shows, instead, that - contrary to what was previously thought - the

majority of five-year-old children are aware of the fact that people (including

themselves) are thinking continuously, depicted in their answers when asked

questions like “were you thinking of anything while you were sitting on chair

2?”, (if yes) “what were you thinking about?” Sitting on chair 2 did not

involve any obvious activity, as the researchers wanted to show that children

realized there was mental activity even in situations of inactive tasks. These

children, moreover, gave more relevant than irrelevant answers concerning

the content of thought. In the same study, children were found to be more

aware of their own thinking than of other people’s thinking, a finding which

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seems compatible to the simulation theory mentioned before, in the sense that

we first “see” our own thinking and later attribute thinking to others.

The above findings and conclusions seem to give evidence that young

children do posses some kind of introspection abilities and to imply that

preschool children’s introspective abilities might not be as ‘poor’ as Flavell et

al (1993a) suggested in their previous studies. As recent studies give more

optimistic evidence about young children’s ability (in Louca-Papaleontiou et

al. 2012 study they were five year old) to reflect both on the fact and the

content of their thinking, they, therefore, call into question the common view

that young children have a pervasive lack of awareness of their mental

activity.

Given the above mixed and conflicting results, what conclusion might one

draw about young children’s introspective abilities?

Efforts to Explain the Conflicting Findings

In an attempt to explain these discrepancies in children’s introspective

studies, Estes (1998) suggests that the ability to introspect should not be

thought of as a single ability, which either one possess or not. There might be

different types and levels of introspection that have different degree of

difficulty, as it happens with other kinds of cognition as well. Whether a child

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is going to successfully introspect or not, therefore, might depend on a) the

child (the introspector) and the individual differences among children in

introspective disposition, ability and experience, b) the introspected content

and the great variation in the accessibility of introspective contents, and c) the

contextual support. Among such support factors named by Estes 1989 were

the repetition of the mental activity across multiple trials and the careful

guidance by the questions, so that children understand the instructions well. In

a similar way in Louca- Papaleontiou et al. (2012) study the researchers used

simple questions and guidance so that children were able to answer

appropriately. It is clear that the issue of language and linguistic complexity

must always be emphasized.

Similarly, Flavell et al. (1995b, p.75) identify four different levels of

response to the introspective tasks that might reflect differences in

introspective ability:

1. Although the nature of the task ensured that the participants had

in fact been thinking during the time period under inquiry, when

asked, they do not report having done any thinking.

2. The subject errs by reporting thoughts that had not in reality

occurred during this period.

3. The subject accurately reports object or events that he or she had

in fact been thinking about. However, the report is construed by

the subject as a factual report of the external objects or events

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encountered during this period or something similar, rather than

as an introspective, consciously reflective type report of thoughts

concerning them.

4. Level 4 is the same as level 3, with the crucial difference that the

subject thinks of what he or she is doing as reporting mental

activity concerning the task objects and events rather than just

reporting the presence of the objects and events themselves.

Thus, level 4 is in fact what is considered to be introspection,

whereas level 3 is not.

The above distinction suggests that not all levels refer to genuine

introspection, and Flavell et al. (1995b) emphasise that it is only the latter type

of report that amounts to genuine introspection. So it is possible to explain

the difference among reports on the development of introspection in children,

as the levels of introspection investigated might not be the same. On the same

lines, Harris (1995) focused on a distinction made by Flavell et al. (1995b)

concerning the levels of introspection and suggests:

“On the one hand, children might report what they have, in fact,

been thinking about, but construe their report as a factual report of

the external objects or events encountered.... rather than as

introspective, reflective consciousness-type report of thoughts

concerning them”. On the other hand, children can construe what

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they are doing as “reporting the presence of the objects and events

themselves” (p. 75).

Harris (1995) suggests two possibilities that might account for the

discrepancy in children’s introspective studies: One concerns the nature of the

introspected process and the other the way in which the dialogue between

experimenter and child is conducted.

As far as the first one is concerned, Harris believes that children's capacity

for genuine introspection might vary with the type of cognitive process under

consideration. For example, Harris (1995) argues, we cannot deny a genuine

introspection in Estes et al (1989), because children explicitly recognised that

such transformations could not be applied to real things; only to the imagined

ones. As Harris (1995) notes some forms of mental activity may be more

accessible than others to young children’s introspection, and visual imagery

may indeed be a particularly accessible type of thinking for young children.

Τhis assumption, however, needs further investigation.

As far as the second one is concerned, Harris claims that “children’s

ability to engage in a dialogue about the past is certainly worthy of study in its

own right, but it may not reveal at all that children can remember about the

past”(p. 101).

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Another factor that might contribute to children’s awareness (or not) of a

specific mental content is the number of repetitions of a particular mental

activity across multiple trials (Estes 1998) as a learning effect.

One more possible explanation for the discrepancy of the studies mentioned

earlier might reflect the age difference of the children involved in the studies.

That is, 5 yr-olds, should normally perform better than 4 yr-olds.

However, Astington (1995) suggests that both 4 and 5-year-olds in Gopnik

and Astington’s (1988) study might be able to report their earlier beliefs; but

it might also be true that children of this age, as Flavell et al. argue (1993,

1995b), are not very good at introspecting/reporting their thoughts, but more

able to introspect the content of their mental states.

Flavell et al. (1995b) suggest that the pre-school children in Gopnik and

Slaughter’s (1991) study, who appeared to introspect, might not have

remembered what they had thought but what they had said. However this

might not be the case, since in an earlier study (Gopnik & Astington, 1988)

children were not asked to say what they had thought but, nevertheless, 4 and

5-year-olds were able to report their earlier beliefs.

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How can children’s introspective abilities be improved?

One of the most effective ways for improving children’s introspective

abilities is through acquiring a mental lexicon and its associated folk theory of

mind. Such an acquisition would help children to think and talk about mental

events (differentiated and nuanced ways) and therefore increase their

awareness of their own mental events (Astington, 1995, Flavell, 1995b,

Flavell, Green & Flavell, 2000, Olson, 1994).

Also, according to Malle (2002), the degree to which children are exposed

to representational language should accelerate their introspective abilities. As

also de Villiers, 2002 showed syntactical and oblique complement structures

are closely related to success at false belief tasks. At the opposite end would

be deaf children with parents whose sign language is primitive and lacks

representational elaboration, resulting in slowing the maturation of the

children’s introspective abilities, as Schick, de Villiers, de Villiers &

Hoffmeister, (2007) showed. Malle, (2002) goes on stating that “sharpened

introspection within any new generation may then lead to increasingly subtle

and differentiated first-person statements about preferences or emotional

responses”… (p.11).

Estes (1994) makes some more practical suggestions of using language for

promoting metacognitive development in the education of young children. For

example, helping children to express in language what they think and feel

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will also help them become more aware of their thoughts and feelings. This is

already an implicit form of metacognitive training.

Moreover, the use of imaginative words and children's involvement in

construction and discussion of “pictures in the head” may prove to be a good

way to promote metacognitive development. Talking explicitly about mental

images would be one natural way to exercise the imagination and give early

childhood education a more metacognitive flavor, although it is possible,

according to Cowey & Stoerig, (1997), to report (on the basis of animal

studies) about seeing a certain image without language: such possibilities

should be investigated with children.

It seems, therefore, that language plays a crucial mediator role in the

development of metacognition in general (and introspection more

specifically), and for this purpose the intervention programme of this study is

heavily based on metacognitive and mental-state language.

Similarly, according to Louca-Papaleontiou et al. (2012) it is likely that the

continuous reference to people’s thoughts and feelings, as well as the

inferences children often make about one’s content of thought, in addition to

the internal-state words used by children are a contributing factor for the

improvement of young children’s introspective abilities.

So, Louca-Papaleontiou et al. (2012) write:

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 YOUNG CHILDREN’S METACOGNITIVE ABILITY
OF INTROSPECTION

“The frequent use of internal-state words draws attention to aspects

of daily experience and broadens children’s understanding of how

the mind works, thus enabling them to make more successful

inferences about its content. Especially the use of cognitive or

mental-state words (such as know, think, guess, remember, forget

and so on), also known as metacognitive language, deepens

children’s metacognitive understanding and positively influences

their introspection ability. This finding is consistent with Vygotsky’s

theory about the critical role language plays in modeling and

monitoring cognitive abilities (p.23).

The above argument supports Hughes and Dunn’s (1998) suggestion that

frequency of metacognitive talk does predict children’s ‘theory of mind’

performance (independent of general verbal ability), and the general finding

that ‘theory of mind’, is considered to be dependent on the acquisition of

metacognitive language, such as the terms that are used to refer to mental

states (Olson, 1988, 1994).

This brings us back to the well-known discussion of the relation of theory of

mind and language (for reviews see: Astington & Jenkins, 1999, Malle, 2002,

Falkman, 2005), which seems to be a bi-directional relationship, with

language influencing theory of mind and vice-versa (see also Louca-

Papaleontiou, 2002, 2008). After all, language remains central to theory of

mind processes precisely because it provides particularly effective

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 YOUNG CHILDREN’S METACOGNITIVE ABILITY
OF INTROSPECTION

‘scaffolding’ for symbolic representations (Karmiloff-Smith, 1993 and de

Villiers, 2002).

In addition to the use of mental language, however, literature suggests

another crucial way to improve one’s introspective abilities: namely, social

interaction (Salmon & Lucas, 2011). According to this view (based on

Vygotsky, 1978), children learn, develop and construct an understanding of

mind through their interaction with adults and more expert peers. Especially, a

conversation about mental world is essential for the development of mental

constructs and social understanding.

The last four paragraphs above seem to throw light and also emphasize the

educational implications that derive from the literature review related to

young children’s development of their reflective consciousness:

It seems therefore, that the frequent reference of a metacognitive language is

essential in improving children’s introspective abilities and promoting their

metacognition (Louca-Papaleontiou et al., 2012), and the encouragement of

social interaction is crucial for understanding the complex, unique forms of

human behavior (Vygotsky, 1978) .

If parents and teachers really seek to improve their children’s introspective

and metacognitive abilities, the use of a metacognitive language and the

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OF INTROSPECTION

promotion of cooperative work, should then become an integral part of young

children’s interventional and educational programs.

Closing Note

The acquisition of introspective abilities by young children is undoubtedly

an important development for both their cognitive and social development.

Among others, “it helps children learn what they and other people are like

subjectively, and thus what it is like to be a person. It helps them realize that,

because they themselves are continually hosting a variety of mental states,

other people must be too. These acquisitions in turn position them to try to

monitor and regulate their own mentation and also to try to read and influence

the mentation of others” (Flavell, Green & Flavell, 2000, p.110).

We can educate children by encouraging them to adopt a thinking

disposition from an early age. Besides, the emphasis in the modern classroom

is less on memorisation of facts than on the acquisition of cognitive skills such

as thinking, learning, and reasoning… The theory of mind of preschool

children and other metacognitive skills, such as introspection acquired during

preschool, set the basis for future academic success (Astington, 1998). And

the encouragement of children to become aware of their thinking is a crucial

condition for learning how to learn and become lifelong learners.

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