Early theory of mind development is influenced by a variety of experiences and contexts. Social interactions with parents and others are important for developing a theory of mind, but these social processes may be disrupted by aspects of the proximal home environment. The current study observed father-child dyadic mutuality (a construct representing responsiveness, reciprocity, and cooperation during a structured interaction) and its associations with child theory of mind and household chaos in a sample of fathers and their 3- to 5-year-old children (N = 88 dyads). Dyadic mutuality was coded from videotaped structured tasks, household chaos was self-reported by fathers through a questionnaire, and child theory of mind was measured through behavioral tasks. Measures of child expressive language ability, child executive function, and family socioeconomic status are included as covariates. Results show no main effect of either dyadic mutuality or household chaos on child theory of mind, but that the association between dyadic mutuality and child theory of mind was moderated by household chaos, whereby the association between higher observed dyadic mutuality and better child theory of mind abilities was evident only at low and mean levels of chaos. Findings suggest that higher levels of household chaos may disturb the beneficial social interactions between parents and children that influence theory of mind development. Additional contextual variables and processes are discussed.

中文翻译：

---

儿童心智理论、父亲-学龄前儿童的相互关系和家庭混乱之间的关联

早期的心智发展理论受到各种经验和背景的影响。与父母和其他人的社会互动对于发展心智理论很重要，但这些社会过程可能会被最近的家庭环境的某些方面所破坏。目前的研究在父亲及其 3 至 5 岁的样本中观察了父子二元相互关系（一种代表结构化互动过程中的响应、互惠和合作的结构）及其与儿童心理理论和家庭混乱的关联。儿童（N = 88 对）。二元相互关系由录像结构化任务编码，家庭混乱由父亲通过问卷自我报告，儿童心理理论通过行为任务测量。儿童表达语言能力、儿童执行功能和家庭社会经济地位的测量作为协变量包括在内。结果表明，二元相互关系或家庭混乱对儿童心理理论没有主要影响，但二元相互关系与儿童心理理论之间的关联受到家庭混乱的调节，即观察到的二元相互关系越高，儿童心理理论越好。能力只有在低水平和中等水平的混乱中才明显。研究结果表明，较高程度的家庭混乱可能会扰乱父母和孩子之间有益的社会互动，从而影响心理发展理论。讨论了其他上下文变量和过程。