ToM Program for Children

SIP Program for Children

Sessions

Timing

Ÿ 8 sessions (45 minutes)

Ÿ 2 sessions a week

Ÿ During 2 months

Ÿ No follow-up

Ÿ Group of 3 to 4 children

Objectives

General

Ÿ Support the child’s socio-emotional development (understanding and regulation of emotions)

Ÿ Support understanding of own mental states or those of various protagonists

Ÿ Support understanding of the combination of affective and cognitive mental states

Ÿ Support the child’s socio-emotional development

Ÿ Support understanding of social problem solving

Ÿ Support understanding of social information processing, notably abilities displayed in the five steps

By process

Affective ToM

Ÿ Support understanding of desires

Ÿ Support recognition of own and others’ facial expressions (sadness, joy, fear, anger) following developmental order: photographic facial recognition; schematic facial recognition; situation-based emotions; desire-based emotions; belief-based emotions

Ÿ Support understanding of causes and consequences of own and others’ emotions.

Cognitive ToM

Ÿ Support understanding of perspective-taking following developmental acquisition: simple perspective-taking; complex perspective-taking; seeing leads to knowing; true belief prediction; false belief.

Ÿ Support understanding of own and others’ beliefs and false beliefs

Ÿ Support understanding of intentions, knowledge, pretense, thinking, attention, and visual perception.

Combination of mental states

Ÿ Support understanding of desire-based emotion, perception-based belief, perception-based action, belief- and reality-based emotion and second-order emotion

Steps of SIP

1. Encoding other people’s social and emotional cues,

2. Interpretation of social and emotional cues,

3. Clarification of goals,

4. Response access,

5. Response decision.

Ÿ Avoid hostile attribution bias - Steps 1, 2

Ÿ Understand critical social situations (provocation, ambiguous situation, conflict, social exclusion, frustration, transgression, cooperation or prosocial help) - Steps 1, 2, 3

Ÿ Identify social behavior as appropriate or not - Steps 1, 2, 3

Ÿ Suggest solutions as response - Steps 3, 4, 5

Ÿ Judge the relevance of responses (inhibit the inappropriate ones and select the appropriate) - Steps 3, 4, 5

Ÿ Give explanation/justification for specific critical social situations - Steps 3, 4, 5