JID:PLREV AID:1094 /DIS [m3SC+; v1.298; Prn:21/03/2019; 15:25] P.1(1-3) Available online at www.sciencedirect.com ScienceDirect Physics of Life Reviews ••• (••••) •••–••• www.elsevier.com/locate/plrev Comment Language influences social cognition Comment on “Words as social tools: Language, sociality and inner grounding in abstract concepts” by Anna M. Borghi et al. Guy Dove University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, United States Received 11 March 2019; accepted 13 March 2019 Communicated by J. Fontanari The word as social tool (WAT) theory has always acknowledged that language may also serve as a cognitive tool [5,6]. In the current version, Borghi and her colleagues write [4, p. 9], “words are tools to perform actions modifying the state of our social environment and are tools that change the state of our inner processes, helping us formulate predictions and facilitating perception, categorization, and thought. As such they are tools for shaping the internal state of our minds/brains.” As someone who has defended the idea that language augments and extends the reach of grounded cognition [14–17], I wholeheartedly agree. In this commentary, though, I want to highlight the way in which language seems to shape social cognition. To be more specific, I hope to show that there are good reasons to think that, as a cognitive tool, it contributes to the development of theory of mind. Human social cognition depends crucially on our ability to infer, imagine, and reason about the mental states of others [22]. Recognizing this, developmental psychologists have sought to uncover the development course of these abilities. They have examined the way in which children attribute beliefs, particularly false ones, to others [34]. What has emerged in the course of this research is evidence suggesting that language plays an important causal role in the development of theory of mind [13]. In fact, this evidence suggests three types of influence: First, the acquisition of words for mental states appears to shape and transform social cognition – an idea that is consistent with other proposals suggesting that labels shape emotion [3] and perception [24]. Second, word-to-word associations appear to be an important resource in the development of theory of mind. Finally, certain syntactic competences appear to play an instrumental role in the acquisition of theory of mind skills. According to the first of our proposed influences, learning to apply mental state terms provides children with a helpful leg up with respect to the acquisition of theory of mind skills. This proposal is supported by the observation that frequent use of mental terms by young children with parents, siblings, and friends correlates with success on false belief tasks [7,18,31]. In the second of our proposed influences, conversations provide essential input for learning about the mental states of others [21,28]. The idea is that certain kinds of conversations help children become aware of the ways in which the thoughts of others can diverge from their own. Learning to talk about mental states not only requires mastering certain DOI of original article: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.plrev.2018.12.001. E-mail address: guy.dove@louisville.edu. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.plrev.2019.03.007 1571-0645/ 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.