Promoção da linguagem referente aos estados mentais e da consciência metatextual: pesquisa de seguimento no ensino fundamental

Abstract

The ability that humans have to infer their own mental states and those of others, known in the literature as "theory of mind", is one of the central aspects of social cognitive development. Current investigations have addressed, among other things, its relationship with language, social development and education. In this context of interface, mediated reading of children's storybooks is a useful resource for the promotion of language as regards mental states and meta-textual awareness. This research involves the follow-up study to intervention research that implemented a program aimed at promoting language referring to mental states, with emphasis on emotional terms, and meta-textual awareness in children in the first year of elementary school in a public school in Minas Gerais. This study aimed to evaluate possible positive effects on empathy and reading comprehension, as well as meta-textual awareness after a period of eight months. 54 students took part, with a mean age of 7.9 years, who had participated in the above-mentioned intervention program. After ethical procedures, assessment was carried out individually: we applied the Empathy Scale for children and adolescents, the Cloze Test directed at mental states, and the child was asked to write a story based on a picture from a children’s book. The data were tabulated and analyzed statistically. Results indicated a good performance by the pupils in the three variables under study – empathy, reading comprehension and meta-textual awareness. There was a gender difference in favor of the girls, for the variables empathy and meta-textual awareness. The Spearman coefficient indicated a significant correlation between reading comprehension and narrative production. The results support the view that the program that gave rise to this research contributed to the development of empathic skills and reading comprehension. In a complementary way, it can be considered that the stimulation of meta-textual awareness favored the production of narratives. These results confirm the importance of using children's literature when carrying out intervention programs to promote socio-cognitive and meta-textual awareness.