Abstract: Abstract Numerous studies have show that children’s language ability is not only related to false-belief understanding, but also appeared to play an important role in the development of theory of mind (ToM). However, it remained unclear which aspect of language development contributes most to the development of ToM. Many researchers such as Moore et al. (1994) and de Matsui et al. (2006) argue that the mental state language of particular languages might be related to children’s theory of mind development. This study explored the relationship between preschoolers’ flase belief understanding and the using of mental state terms within a storytelling task. Using 101 children aged 3-5 in the kindergarten as subjects, the study adopted a short-term longitudinal design which was administered twice at three-month intervals, so that children’s mental state discourse at Times 1 and 2 could both be related to false belief assessed at Time2. This study was designed to examine children’s mental state discourse within a storytelling task, in which children were asked to generate responses to a series of photographs, and assess using a set of false belief tasks, including unexpected transfer, unexpected content and appearance-reality task. The results showed these two are very close to each other. Within Picture talking, preschoolers used fewer belief terms than desire terms and emotional terms, and vocabulary types of the cognitive terms were less, mainly ‘yao4’ and ‘xiang3’. Furthermore, only on the first test, control the general language ability and age, there was still a remarkable correlation beween children’ emotional terms , belief terms and false belief understanding in the same period, even later false belief understanding, but there wasn’t evident correlation between the false belief task performance at time1 and the mental state language at time2. The results of this short-term longitudinal study provide some support for the important role of verbal skills plays in the development of ToM, particularly the mental state language.

Key words: mental state terms, false belief, desire terms, emotional terms, belief terms, cognitive terms

摘要： 摘 要：为探明汉语儿童看图叙述中心理状态术语的应用及与错误信念理解能力的关系，并追踪二者相互作用的方向，本研究以101名3-5岁儿童为研究对象，纵向探查了前后相隔3个月的儿童看图叙述中心理状态术语使用情况和错误信念能力的发展状况，并从横向和纵向两个时间点分别探讨了心理状态术语的运用与错误信念理解的关系。结果表明：3-5岁儿童错误信念理解能力快速发展；儿童看图叙述中使用较多的愿望术语和情绪术语，信念术语应用相对较少，且认知词汇类型较少。控制了一般语言能力和年龄之后，仅在第一次测验上，情绪术语、信念术语仍然与同期及后期错误信念理解能力存在显著相关。

关键词: 心理状态术语, 错误信念, 信念术语, 情绪术语, 愿望术语, 认知术语