Abstract
The present study examined the effects of role-play on mind-reading, to determine whether understanding of another’s thoughts and role-playing were related in 9 year-old primary school children. In this study, 46 children performed three types of tasks related to understanding the mind of another individual. After performing these tasks, participants were randomly assigned to two groups and introduced to a communication task in which the use of mind-reading was essential (adapted from Dumontheil, Apperly, & Blakemore, 2010). For purposes of analysis, the data were divided into two groups according to scores on the tasks related to understanding the mind of another individual. The non-role-playing group made significantly more mistakes than did the role-playing group. The low-score group made significantly more mistakes than did the high-score group. These results suggest that experience with role-playing may activate mind-reading in the communication task. However, there was no group difference in reaction time whereas there was a group difference among the 40 adult participants.
