Development of Mentalizing Ability in Japanese Children

This longitudinal study examined the early development of mentalizing ability in 33 Japanese children, who were between 33
and 39 months old. Their mentalizing ability was assessed using the following tasks: 1) gaze-direction, 2) point-direction,
3) desire-emotion, 4) emotion-situation, and 5) divergent beliefs, at two time-points with a 6-month interval. The children’s
performance improved significantly over 6 months for all tasks except divergent beliefs. Although an increasing proportion
of the children achieved the criterion for the divergent beliefs task, only two thirds met this criterion at Time 2. The children’s
performances did not differ from their western counterparts as reported in previous studies. The mentalizing abilities, except
for the emotion-situation task measured at Time 1, correlated significantly with one another and predicted the emotion-situation
task performance at Time 2. The findings on the development of mentalizing ability in Japanese children are discussed in light
of cross-cultural perspectives.