Thirty children with cochlear implants (CI children), age range 3-12 years, and 30 children with normal hearing (NH children), age range 4-6 years, were tested on theory of mind and language measures. The CI children showed little to no delay on either theory of mind, relative to the NH children, or spoken language, relative to hearing norms. The CI children showed a slightly atypical sequence of acquisition of theory of mind concepts. The CI children's theory of mind performance was associated with general syntactic proficiency more than measures of complement syntax, and with time since implantation more than age at implantation. Results suggest that cochlear implantation can benefit spoken language ability, which may then benefit theory of mind, perhaps by increasing access to mental state language.

Results of this study suggest that ToM maturation in deaf children might be facilitated by developing general spoken language skills as well as understanding and using cognitive and emotional language. These findings might also extend to children with normal hearing who are also at risk for ToM deficits (e.g., children on the autistic spectrum and children with pragmatic language delays).

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract