Abstract
The development of thinking with all its different aspects is not alone a theme of cognitive psychology, but more and more of developmental psychology, in particular with psychoanalytic background. At the latest since the important work by Fonagy, Gergely, Jurist and Target (2004) we are aware of the possible impact of an impaired mentalisation capacity for psychic development. In this article we discuss three aspects of thinking: narrative competence, representations and mentalisation and theory of mind; we will limit ourselves to children in first and second year
of Kindergarten who are between 5 and 6 years old. The narrative competence is a really rich and interesting construct as well as a psychic ability connecting cognitive and affective aspects in a most interesting way. Representations of relationships are the main issue of several theories in developmental psychology. The concept of theory of mind has become very significant in cognitive psychology. After a detailed introduction of the central concepts, in the empiric part we will show how aspects of narrative competence are associated with advanced theory of mind skills. Children having passed a theory of mind test respond more to the conflict of the story and show less avoidant strategies in their narratives. Further analyses revealed that only girls showed the expected differences. Therefore an advanced theory of mind capacity gives girls a scope for development to get involved with more difficult conflicts in stories, which enables them to work through more contentious situations.
von Wyl, A