Abstract

Numerous studies show that false belief understanding is related to children’s language ability. In a lingusitic determinism approach, children's comprehension of embedded sentential complements assumedly plays a causal role for the development of a Theory of Mind (ToM) since this lingusitic structure provides a representational format to represent falsity (e.g. “Sally said that it will rain pigs tomorrow.”) and thus allows to think about other people’s mental states. However, studies using eye gaze information as a rather implicit measure of ToM show evidence of an earlier false-belief understanding. In this dissertation my intention is to shed light on the question whether this supposed language dependence also holds true for this implicitly measured ToM or whether this ability develops independent from language capabilities. The overarching objective of this work is to find out whether a correlation between the comprehension of sentential complements and the implicitly measured ToM can be found. On this account, following issues are scheduled in this dissertation:

• development of a nonverbal false-belief task that poses no linguistic demands on either the input or the reaction
• using eyetracking as a method in order to collect eye gaze information as an implicit measure of false belief understanding (applying an anticipatory eye-gaze paradigm)
• constructing German language tasks to investigate children’s comprehension of embedded complement structures explicitly with different kinds of methods:
  • truth value judgment task
  • picture-sentence-matching task
  • memory-for-complement task
• measuring children’s comprehension of embedded complement structures implicitly using the same means of measurement (eye gaze) as used in tasks tapping false belief understanding implicitly

Publications

Talk
Poltrock, S., Höhle, B. & Sauerland, U. "Implicit Measuring of Children's Comprehension of Sentences Containing a Complement Taking Mental Verb – Evidence from Eyetracking", talk given at the Third International Conference of the German Cognitive Linguistics Association, Leipzig, Germany, 2008

Poltrock, S, & Höhle, B. "Measuring children's implicit understanding of belief using eyetracking", talk given at the Tobii Eyetracking Conference on Psychology & Linguistic Research, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2010

Poster
Poltrock, S., Höhle, B. & Sauerland, U. "Implicit Measuring of Children's Comprehension of Sentences Containing a Complement Taking Mental Verb – Evidence from Eyetracking", poster presented at the Conference on Language, Communication and Cognition
University of Brighton, Brighton, UK, 2008

Ringmann, S., Poltrock, S. & Höhle, B."Implizite und explizite Theory of Mind bei Asperger- und High-Functioning Autismus? Eine Eyetracking-Studie", poster presented at the 3rd WTAS Wissenschaftliche Tagung Autismus Spektrum, Frankfurt, Germany, 2010

Research interests

Social cognition in infancy

The role of language in the development of a Theory of Mind

Eye Movements as an online measure of information processing

Theory Of Mind in children and adults with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD)

Education
2006 - presentPhD student, University of Potsdam, Linguistics Department
10/2008 - presentScholarship holder, Ph.D. Program in Clinical Linguistics, University of Potsdam
10/2006 - 09/2008Project Associate, CHLaSC-project; University of Potsdam, Linguistics Department
09/2006Diploma in Psychology, University of Potsdam, very good
10/1999 - 09/2006Student of psychology, University of Potsdam
10/2001Prediploma Psychology, University Potsdam
06/1999Abitur, Rudolf-Hildebrand-Gymnasium, Stendal, Germany

Teaching & Student research activities
Introduction to Advantages of Group Work for students aiming at teachin gposts, master lever, WS 2003/2004, Institute for Psychology, University of Potsdam.

Introduction to linear structural equations with Amos, workshop, master lever, WS 2002, Institute for Psychology, University of Potsdam.

12/2002 - 3/2006
Student assistant, reading lab Cognitive Psychology, University Potsdam, (Prof. Kliegl, Prof. Engbert)

WS 2001 / SS 2002
Tutor, multivariate statistics, Cognitive Psychology, University Potsdam

Skills
Programming in Matlab
Statistics: SPSS, AMOS, R
Eyetrackers: Eyelink and TOBII Systems
Experimental presentation: Matlab, Eprime, Clearview (TOBII)
Basics in Flash
MsOffice Applications, LaTex