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To know if a child’s language represents understanding of mental life it is necessary to analyze the semantic and pragmatic function of the words (Shatz et al., 1983). A child’s awareness of the internal world of beliefs, thoughts, and intentions is expressed through mental verbs; words that reference psychological aspects of cognition, emotion, or perception. When a child speaks for a character in narration they reveal understanding of the distinction between the internal subjective world and the external objective one by contrasting mental states of: reality – mentality; objective – subjective; fact – belief. Mental verbs were identified in narratives of a five year old girl to access the contrastive use of mental verbs to reveal mental state. Context rather than narrative length contributed to the child’s use of mental verbs in expressing his thinking. A contrastive differentiation of mental states shows that the mental world is tied to causal relations and mental reflection of emotional arousal and an understanding of what motivate behavior of self and others. |
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