The recent expansion of research on children's understanding of others' minds (or ‘theory of mind’, ToM) into middle childhood provides fresh opportunities to consider its origins and consequences. In this paper, we propose that, in addition to supporting children's social interactions, individual differences in ToM benefit academic achievement, in particular, reading comprehension and scientific reasoning. Furthermore, we argue that the school and classroom context can influence individual differences in ToM and its ongoing development in middle childhood. We suggest future directions for research to test these claims, which will provide a new perspective on the consequences of ToM and test the developmental continuity of socio-cultural accounts of mindreading.

中文翻译：

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学校心理理论：学业成绩和学校环境的影响

最近关于儿童理解他人思想（或“心智理论”，ToM）的研究扩展到童年中期，为思考其起源和后果提供了新的机会。在本文中，我们提出，除了支持儿童的社交互动外，ToM 的个体差异有利于学业成就，特别是阅读理解和科学推理。此外，我们认为学校和课堂环境可以影响 ToM 的个体差异及其在童年中期的持续发展。我们建议未来的研究方向来测试这些主张，这将为 ToM 的后果提供一个新的视角，并测试读心术的社会文化账户的发展连续性。