Abstract

There is ample evidence for a connection between linguistic abilities and performance in theory of mind tasks (ToM), however there is considerable dispute about precisely how these domains are linked. Disentangling the causal relations between domains in typically developing children is tricky because many skills are developing in synchrony. If ToM performance depends upon children’s current linguistic abilities, then the relation should be present even when language acquisition is delayed. We explored these issues in a group of late English learners, 45 internationally adopted children who came to the US at 2.5 years or older, and a control group of language matched preschoolers who were learning English as a first language. The children were tested on general English language abilities, sentence complement comprehension, English vocabulary and ToM. The two groups performed similarly on standard verbal ToM tasks, even though the adopted group was on average nearly 3 years older. However, the adopted children outperformed the controls in ToM tasks with reduced linguistic demands. General language skills predicted ToM ability in both groups and complement comprehension did not account for any additional variance. The data suggests that executive functioning along with general language skills may be the critical components in ToM success. 3

Citations