Young Children ‘ s Theory of Mind : Home Literacy Environment , Technology Usage , and Preschool Education

Theory of mind (ToM) skills involve young children‘s mentalizing ability to be aware of their own selves and other individuals‘ thoughts, beliefs, desires, and intentions (mental states). The social cognition skills are essential for processing complex social relations and overcoming interpersonal difficulties in communication. Previous studies shed light on the relationship of parenting and demographics to children‘s ToM skills, but do not examine the associations with both home environment and preschool education experiences. The goal of the present study is to investigate children‘s preschool education experience, home literacy environment (HLE), and technology usage in relation to their ToM skills. Participants were 203 preschoolers and their parents. The study data were collected using a home literacy environment questionnaire (HLEQ), theory of mind scale, and a demographic information form. The findings revealed that (a) children‘s ToM scores are not differentiated regarding gender, excluding the diverse belief tasks, b) children‘s ToM performances were differentiated in favor of children who have internet access at home, c) HLE, child age, daily TV watching, household income, maternal education, preschool experience, and shared book reading explained 46% of the total variance of preschoolers‘ ToM scores.

On the other hand, recent cross-cultural studies have yielded that there exists a universal developmental order in acquiring the ToM tasks; however, there is additionally a variation concerning acquisition in task orders between western (individualistic) and eastern (collectivist) societies.Children who are raised in western societies, such as Germany, Australia, and the United States, acquire the ToM skills: diverse desires (DD), diverse beliefs (DB), knowledge access (KA), false beliefs (FB), and hidden emotions (HE) sequence (Kristen, Thoermer, Hofer, Aschersleben, & Sodian, 2006;Shahaeian, Peterson, Slaughter, & Wellman, 2011;Wellman, Fang, & Peterson, 2011).Children from eastern societies, such as China, Iran, and Turkey, acquire KA, wherein they comprehend that an individual who sees something knows about it, prior to comprehending DB, wherein individuals can have different beliefs regarding the same thing (Selcuk, Brink, Ekerim, & Wellman, 2018;Shahaeian et al., 2011;Wellman, Fang, Liu, Zhu, & Liu, 2006).These findings revealed that cultural and parental characteristics as environmental factors are related to children's ToM development.Much of the aforementioned research in this scope has been concerned with children's ToM skills regarding demographic variables such as income, education level, number of siblings, and mothers' mental states while conversing with children.These studies shed light on the relationship of parenting and demographics to children's ToM skills, but do not examine the associations with both home and preschool experiences.In addition, a limited number of studies sought to examine the role of media exposure in young children's ToM skills (Mar, Tackett, & Moore, 2010).Therefore, the present study attempts to elucidate young children's ToM by investigating home literacy environment, technology usage, and preschool education experience through an ecological system perspective.Bronfenbrenner (1986) proposed an ecological system model to explain that environmental factors have an impact on human development.He articulated four complex, nested environmental systems from their inner to external microsystems, mesosystems, exosystems, and macrosystems.According to the model, the microsystem-which includes family, neighborhood, school, and friends-is the first closed environment children face (Bronfenbrenner, 1994;Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 1998).The physical and social characteristics of the microsystem as well as the bidirectional interaction between a child and the microsystem influence his/her development and learning (Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000).Brain studies also provide empirical neuro-imaging evidence that enriched visual, aural, and social stimulus augment synaptic pathways during early childhood (Black et al., 2017;Ducharme et al., 2016;Thompson & Nelson, 2001).Thus, children's early experiences at home along with the physical and social characteristics of the home environment are important research foci.In order to elicit the multidimensional effect of the home environment, the home literacy environment (HLE) framework (Doiron & Shapiro, 1988;Payne, Whitehurst, & Angell, 1994;Shapiro, 1994) emerged.HLE is an index measuring the quality and quantity of children's materials, opportunities, parent-child shared activities, and social interactions occurring at home with parents/caregivers (Burgess, Hect, & Lonigan, 2002;Tabors, Roach, & Snow, 2001).The bulk of research revealed that there is a linkage between children's HLE and language development in terms of vocabulary, phonological awareness, and concepts involving print (Altun, Tantekin-Erden, & Snow, 2018;Boerma, Mol, & Jolles, 2017;Liu, Georgiou, & Manolitsis, 2018;Rose, Lehrl, Ebert, & Weinert, 2018).These results lend support for possible associations between children's ToM, and the motivation of the current study is to investigate HLE and understand the big picture of the children's ToM development rather than focus on, income, education level, number of siblings, or dialogue measuring maternal mental state.A growing body of research has indicated that there exists a significant relationship between children's story comprehension and ToM performance (Adrian, Clemente, Villanueva, & Rieffe, 2005;Pelletier & Beatty, 2015;Sarı & Altun, 2018).Furthermore, Kidd and Castano (2013) found that reading fictional stories fosters ToM skills in adults.Thus, it is possible for children's story reading experiences to bolster their ToM skills because stories provide various protagonists' perspectives along the same plot.Similarly, Mar, Tackett, and Moore (2010) found that children's movie and storybook exposure is related to their ToM skills, while television is not.However, there is a research gap in the exposure role of children information communication technologies (ICTs) on ToM development and the present study attempts to examine children's home literacy experiences and technology usage in relation to their ToM skills.

Preschool Education
In the microsystem, preschool represents an important socialization agent for children.Preschool education's contribution to children's whole development is a thoroughly documented issue (Bakken, Brown, & Downing, 2017;Erkan & Kırca, 2010;Lehrl, Kluczniok, & Rossbach, 2016;Pianta, Barnett, Burchinal, & Thornburg, 2009;Taner & Başal, 2005).In addition to this formal learning experience, children spend time with their peers in the classroom context, and young children face conflict with peers as siblings and their teachers' conflict management and explanations may support their gaining awareness of both themselves and the perspectives of others (Blunk, Russell, & Armga, 2017;Downer, Williford, Bulotsky-Shearer, Vitiello, Bouza, Reilly, & Lhospital, 2018).In addition, teachers' mental state discussions and classroom story reading experiences can improve children's ToM skills (Bal & Veltkamp, 2013;Djikic, Oatley, & Moldoveanu, 2013;Mar, Oatley, & Peterson, 2009).Considering the potential role of preschool education in children's ToM development, the goal of the present study is to investigate children's preschool education experience, HLE, and technology usage in relation to their ToM skills.The study seeks to answer the following research questions.
1) Is there a significant difference in preschoolers' ToM scores in regard to gender?
2) Is there a significant difference in preschoolers' HLE scores in regard to household income?
3) Is there a significant difference in preschoolers' HLE scores in regard to parental education level?4) Is there a significant difference in preschoolers' HLE scores in regard to internet access at home? 5) Is there a significant difference in preschoolers' HLE scores in regard to the amount of preschool education experience?
6) How much variance in children's ToM scores can be explained by HLE, technology usage, and preschool education experience?

Method
The study was conducted using a correlational research design, which explores relations between the study variables without manipulating the variables in order to describe the degree of the existing relations and to determine predictive relations between variables (Creswell, 2015;McMillan, 2016).

Participants
Participants were 203 preschoolers (103 girls and 100 boys) and their parents (168 mothers and 35 fathers).The participating children were recruited from 15 classrooms from five public preschools in Kırşehir, Turkey using convenience sampling.The preschoolers ranged in age from 56-73 months (M = 60.3,SD = 4.97).All of the children were monolingual Turkish speakers and typically developing based on their parents' and classroom teachers' reports.Detailed information regarding the participants is presented in Table 1.

Instruments
The study data were collected using a home literacy environment questionnaire (HLEQ), theory of mind scale, and a demographic information form.

Home Literacy Environment Questionnaire
Marjanovic Umek, Podlesek, and Fekonja (2005) developed the questionnaire to assess young children's home literacy experiences and sources.Altun (2013) translated the HLEQ into Turkish.The questionnaire comprises 32 items on a 6-point Likert-type scale with a five-factor structure: a) stimulation to use language and explanation; b) reading books to the child, visiting the library, and puppet theatre; c) joint activities and conversation; d) interactive reading; and e) zone-of-proximal-development stimulation; the questionnaire gave a total variance of 54.1.The Cronbach's alpha value was .91 for original version.The pilot study was conducted with 754 Turkish parents, producing a Cronbach's alpha value of .89.The explained total variance by five factors was 48.7 for Turkish adaptation.

The Demographic Information Form
The demographic information form was established to collect information from parents regarding their educational level, age, household income, ICTs ownership, children's daily ICT usage time, weekly parent-child shared reading activity time, number of books at home, children's preschool education experience, and children's number of siblings.

Theory of Mind Scale
Wellman and Liu (2004) created tasks to test young children's theory of mind (ToM) skills.Gözün-Kahraman (2012) translated the tasks into Turkish.The tasks are presented to children through scenarios and materials (toys, pictures, etc.) and ordered from easy to difficult in the battery.The tasks scored 1 point for each correct answer and 0 points for each wrong answer.The Turkish version of the ToM battery was administered to 106 children aged 4-6 years.Gözün-Kahraman found the test-retest reliability was .78.Detailed information regarding the ToM tasks is presented in Table 3.The child is introduced to a toy figure (Mr. Ali); then, the child is required to judge the child's and Ali's different desires about eating preference (a carrot vs. a cookie).

Diverse beliefs
The child is introduced to a toy figure (Miss Ayşe) and then is required to judge the child's and Ayşe's different beliefs about where Ayşe's cat is hiding (in the garage vs. the bushes).

Knowledge access
The child is presented with a small box.The child is asked to predict what is in the box; then, the child sees that there is a small toy dog in the box.The child is introduced to another person (Zeynep) who has never seen inside of the box.The child is asked, -Does Zeynep know what's in the box?‖

Contents false beliefs
The child is presented with a Band-Aid box and asked to predict what is in the box.The child sees that there is small toy horse in the box.Another person (Ahmet) is then introduced; he has never seen inside the box.The child is then asked the following target questions: -What does Ahmet think is inside the box?A Band-Aid or a horse?Did Ahmet see the inside of this box?‖

Real apparent emotion
The child is exposed to a short story about a boy (Mehmet).The child is required to judge Mehmet's real emotions and discuss the different emotions Mehmet feels about his friends' behavior toward him.

Data Collection Procedures
After obtaining official permission from the university ethics committee and the Ministry of National Education, 280 consent forms and HLEQs were distributed to parents via 15 preschool teachers.A total of 203 parents (72.5%) signed the consent form and filled out the HLEQ.The ToM battery was administered to the children one-by-one in an empty classroom or room in their school.The duration of the ToM battery ranged from 10-27 minutes.

Results
Table 4 presents the data set of the study.The normal distribution of the scores was checked based on the skewness and kurtosis values and histograms.The skewness and kurtosis values of the scores did not exceed the -2 to +2 range, and the histogram graphs visually supported normal distribution.Thus, the data set has not violated normal distribution (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2007).

Preschoolers' ToM Scores Regarding Gender
The percentages of preschoolers who passed each of the ToM tasks are included in Table 5.The study found that the majority of the children (79%) passed the diverse desire task, whereas the minority of the children (36.80%) passed the real apparent emotion task Independent sample t-tests were performed to compare preschoolers' ToM scores regarding gender.There was NOT a significant difference between girls (M = 3.18, SD = 1.17) and boys (M = 3.06, SD = 1.09) and the children's total ToM scores (t [201] = .781,p > 0.05).However, there were significant gender differences in the diverse beliefs task scores in favor of the girls (t [201] = 2.210, p < 0.05).

Preschoolers' ToM Scores Regarding Household Income
One-way ANOVA analyses were carried out to compare preschoolers' ToM scores regarding household income.The test results revealed a statistically significant difference in ToM scores (F [4,198] = 7.905, p < 0.05) with regard to income.Labor, Social Services, and Family (2018), the net minimum wage in Turkey is 1,603 Turkish lira (TRY), the individual poverty threshold is set at 2.136 TRY and a living wage for a four-person family is 5.662 TRY (Confederation of Turkish Trade Unions, 2018).
The Scheffe test for post hoc comparisons was performed in order to examine where the differences in scores occurred.The results showed statistical differences among Group 1 (M = 2.13, SD =1.21) and Group 2 (M = 3.23, SD = 1.03),Group 3 (M = 3.24, SD = 1.13),Group 4 (M = 3.13, SD = 1.12), and Group 5 (M = 3.51, SD = .84).The mean plot of the groups' ToM scores is presented in Appendix A.

Preschoolers' ToM Scores Regarding Parental Educational Level
One-way ANOVA analyses were carried out to compare preschoolers' ToM scores in terms of maternal education level.Levene's test was .08;thus, the data set met the homogeneity of variance.As seen in Table 7, the results imply that preschoolers' ToM scores were differentiated to a statistically significant level regarding maternal education design (F [5, 197] = 6.660, p < 0.05).3.12 The Scheffe test for post hoc comparisons was conducted to examine ToM score differences among income groups.The results showed statistical differences among Group 1 (M = 2.17, SD = 1.33) and Group 3 (M = 3.14, SD = 1.08) as well as Group 5 (M = 3.50, SD = .97)and Group 6 (M = 4.16, SD = .75).In addition, there were statistically significant differences between Group 2 (M = 2.52, SD = 1.20) and Group 4 (M = 3.08, SD = .84).The means plot of the groups' ToM scores is displayed in Appendix B. However, the test results showed statistically significant differences in ToM scores (F [5, 197] = 1.874, p > 0.05) with regard to paternal education level.

Preschoolers' ToM Scores Regarding Internet Access at Home
Independent samples t-test results revealed that there was a significant difference in preschoolers' ToM scores between children who have internet access in their home (M = 3.26, SD = 1.13) and those who do not (M = 2.87, SD = 1.09, t [201] = 2.345, p < 0.05).

Preschoolers' ToM Scores Regarding HLE, Technology Usage, and Preschool Education Experience
A Pearson correlation analysis was conducted to examine bivariate relations between the study variables.Preliminary analyses showed that there was no violation of the assumptions of normality and linearity.As shown Table 9, there was a moderately significant relationship between the ToM total and child age (r = 0.49, p < 0.01), HLEQ (r = 0.46, p < 0.01), parent-child shared book reading (r = 0.41, p < 0.01), the amount of preschool education experience (r = 0.38, p < 0.01), and maternal education level (r = 0.35, p < 0.01).Multiple regression analysis was conducted to examine how the contributions of HLE, child age, daily TV watching, household income, maternal education, preschool experience, and shared book reading can predict pre-service preschoolers' ToM scores.Preliminary analysis revealed that the data set met the assumptions of the multiple regression analysis, including sample size (n > 50 + 9 m, m = predictors numbers), multicollinearity (correlations between independent and dependent variables is above 0.30, Tolerance > 0.10, VIF < 10), outliers (Mahalanobis distance is below 27.88), linearity, and homoscedasticity assumptions (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2007).

Discussion
In this study, young children's ToM skills were examined regarding the home environment and preschool education experience contexts.The study's findings revealed that children's age is moderately related (r = 0.49) to their ToM skills.Similarly, Selcuk et al. (2018) found a significant relationship (r = 0.47) between children's ages and ToM skills.The developmental order in ToM skills acquisition has been addressed in previous studies (Hughes et al., 2011;Jenkins & Astington, 1996;Miller, 2009;Wellman et al., 2001).Furthermore, the present study showed that Turkish preschoolers gain ToM skills in the sequence of DD, KA, DB, FB, RAE, similar to children in Eastern societies (Selcuk et al., 2018;Shahaeian et al., 2011;Wellman et al., 2006) but different from those in Western societies (Kristen et al., 2006;Shahaeian et al., 2011).Cultural variances between the ToM sequence of acquisition can be interpreted to reflect on parents' child rearing values, practices, social rules, and expectations in collectivist vs. individualist societies (Shahaeian et al., 2011;Wellman et al., 2006).Furthermore, these findings can be examined in the light of Vygotskian perspectives about the role of language/discourse and the mind in the cultural-historical theory of humans.Therefore, cross-cultural studies should examine parent-child discourses and mental-states usage in different cultures and their relationship to the sequence of children's ToM acquisition.
This study also revealed that preschoolers' ToM skills are not differentiated regarding gender, excluding the diverse belief tasks.In line with this finding, other studies had gender-neutral findings regarding young children's ToM abilities (Altun, 2018;Carr et al., 2018;Devine & Hughes, 2016;Wellman & Liu, 2004).However, the limited number of studies conducted with Turkish preschoolers (Sarı & Altun, 2018;Selcuk et al., 2018) found that girls outperformed the boys in ToM tasks, but also that the gender differences are more likely to be reported in older children with regard to socialization and gender roles (Calero, Salles, Semelman, & Sigman, 2013;Devine & Hughes, 2016).
Turning now to the results of other sub-analyses, children's ToM performances were differentiated in favor of children who have internet access at home.Although, children's daily time on online platforms and watching TV were not predictors of their ToM scores.Children who have internet access at home may be related their household income thus it was found related to their ToM scores.On the other hand, Mar et al. (2010), however, found that inferred movie and TV exposure is associated with children's ToM performances.Nathanson, Sharp, Aladé , Rasmussen and Christy (2013) found that children's ToM performance was negatively associated with TV exposure.However, parent-child discourse of TV watching was positively associated with children's ToM performance.Previous studies addressed that Turkish children mostly play digital games and watch cartoons on online platforms (Altun, 2017;Altun & Tantekin-Erden, 2015).Therefore, children's technology usage, not just the time spent but also the quantity and content, as well as parent involvement in technology usage should be examined jointly as qualitative aspects to clarify media exposure's influence on ToM development.
Another finding of the present study was that preschoolers' ToM scores were differentiated in terms of maternal education level but not paternal education level.As shown throughout in the literature, maternal education level is closely related to children's ToM performance (Cutting & Dunn, 1999;Meins et al., 2002;Pears & Moses, 2003;Ruffman et al., 2002).Intriguingly, when maternal education was entered into multiple regression models with other variables, it was found that it is not a significant predictor of ToM.The results of this study are therefore in line with a growing body of research that has shown that maternal mental-state talking with children, child rearing practices, and family backgrounds are related to the mothers' education level (Cutting & Dunn, 1999;Ruffman et al., 2002;Shahaeian, Henry, Razmjoee, Teymoori & Wang, 2015;Thompson & Nelson, 2001) and children's ToM skills.In this model, the home literacy environment and parent-child shared reading activities entered the model jointly with maternal education level, thus, maternal education may be indirectly related to ToM and directly related to mother-child interactions and HLE.The present study also found that maternal education is strongly associated (r = 0.54) with HLE.Similarly, children's ToM scores were statistically differentiated regarding income, but when entering it into the model with other study variables, it was not a statistically significant predictor.Correlation analysis showed that there were strong relationships between income and maternal education.In addition, there were moderate relationships between income and HLE, shared reading activities, and preschool education experience.Therefore, further studies should examine direct and indirect relationships between maternal education, income, HLE, shared reading, and preschool education experience on ToM scores by using path models.
Perhaps the most interesting contribution of this study is its examination of the home environment and preschool education experience's role in young children's ToM skills.The study findings revealed that both home and preschool education are associated with children's ToM performance.Children who have more preschool education experience and come from an enriched HLE background have higher ToM skills.As a limitation, the present study only used preschool education experience in months.Further studies should include a longer time frame as well as examine preschool education quality regarding teacher mental-state talking with children, peer relations, storybook reading experiences, and social interactions in a classroom environment with HLE by using multilevel modeling.In sum, ToM is a complex social cognition that covers the differentiated self, other perspective processing, and has the capability to predict another person's behaviors based on their mental state.Therefore, children's wide range of skills, such as language, executive functions, working memory (Carlson, Mandell, & Williams, 2004;Duh, Paik, Miller, Gluck, Li, & Himelfarb, 2016;Mutter, Alcorn, & Welsh, 2006), and demographics, as well as parenting and early childhood education experiences can be related to their ToM skills.The study variables, however, can only explain only 46% of the variance in children's ToM skills.As a limitation, the present study does not address children's language skills and other cognitive skills.Future studies should investigate young children's ToM skills addressing language and other cognitive abilities to broaden our understanding of ToM development.

Table 1 .
Demographic Information of the Participants As shown in Table2, 39.9% of the mothers and 38.4% of the fathers had graduated from high school.Among the parents, 27.1% of the mothers and 29.6% of the fathers had graduated from university.

Table 3 .
ToM Tasks and Brief Content Description

Table 4 .
Characteristics of the Data Set

Table 5 .
Percentages of Preschoolers' Who Passed ToM Tasks

Table 6 .
One Way ANOVA results for preschoolers' ToM scores in terms of income **According to the Ministry of

Table 7 .
One-Way ANOVA Results for Preschoolers' ToM Scores in Terms of Maternal Education

Table 8 .
Independent samples t-tests results of preschoolers' ToM scores regarding internet access

Table 9 .
Pearson correlation between the study variables

Table 10 .
Results of multiple regression analysis for preschoolers' ToM scores