Are there different pathways to explicit false belief understanding? General language and complementation in typical and atypical children

Farrar, M. Jeffrey; Benigno, Joann P.; Tompkins, Virginia; Gage, Nicholas A.

doi:10.1016/j.cogdev.2017.02.005

Cited by 51 publications

(39 citation statements)

References 59 publications

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“…This pathway is different from that of monolingual children where language and executive function are significant contributors to FB understanding. More broadly, these results support the argument of multiple routes for developing FB understanding depending on children's linguistic experiences and cognitive profiles (Farrar et al., ; Tager‐Flusberg & Joseph, ).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 81%

“…In fact, studies on different populations, such as children with autism and those who are deaf, have identified different linguistic routes to FB understanding (Farrar, Benigno, Tompkins, & Gage, 2017).…”

Section: Metalinguistic Awarenessmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Of interest is whether the different cognitive profiles of monolingual and bilingual children lead to different pathways to FB understanding in these two groups. In fact, studies on different populations, such as children with autism and those who are deaf, have identified different linguistic routes to FB understanding (Farrar, Benigno, Tompkins, & Gage, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The missing explanation of the false‐belief advantage in bilingual children: a longitudinal study

Díaz

Farrar

2017

Developmental Science

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Bilingual preschoolers often perform better than monolingual children on false-belief understanding. It has been hypothesized that this is due to their enhanced executive function skills, although this relationship has rarely been tested or supported. The current longitudinal study tested whether metalinguistic awareness was responsible for this advantage. Further, we examined the contributions of both executive functioning and language ability to false-belief understanding by including multiple measures of both. Seventy-eight children (n = 40 Spanish-English bilingual; age M = 49.29, SD = 7.38 and, n = 38 English monolingual; age M = 47.75, SD = 6.86) were tested. A year later the children were tested again (n = 22 bilingual, n = 25 monolingual). The results indicated that language and executive function (inhibitory control) at time 1 were related to false belief in monolinguals at time 2. In contrast, bilinguals' metalinguistic performance at time 1 was the sole predictor of false belief at time 2. The different linguistic and cognitive profiles of monolinguals and bilinguals may create different pathways for their development of false-belief understanding. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at: https://youtu.be/vILn2gKjFxw.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 81%

Section: Metalinguistic Awarenessmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The missing explanation of the false‐belief advantage in bilingual children: a longitudinal study

Díaz

Farrar

2017

Developmental Science

Self Cite

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“…Comparing mothers' cognitive state talk assessed during shared book reading with 3-to 5-year-olds in relation to children's FB understanding six months later, the authors found that, in opposition to the mother's use of contrastives, nor the total use of cognitive state vocabulary neither the complement syntax using the verb "think" predicted children's FB understanding. In their interesting review, Farrar and colleagues [66] analyze different studies and suggest that it seems that syntactic complementation has an influence only on atypical development and not also in typically developing children, where general language seems to have a more relevant effect. Second, to understand why studies investigating the relationship between syntax and ToM yielded mixed results, it is important to pay attention to the nature of the experimental tasks.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the Relationship between Theory of Mind and Syntax in Clinical and Non-Clinical Populations: State of the Art and Implications for Research

Fontana¹,

Adenzato²,

Penso³

et al. 2018

TOPSYJ

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Background:Over the years, different explanations have been given on the relationship between syntax and Theory of Mind,i.e., the ability to attribute mental states to others and predict, describe, and explain behavior based on such mental states. In the present study, we focus on the relationship between false-belief understanding as a crucial aspect of Theory of Mind, and on the ability to master the syntax of complementation,i.e., the ability to produce and comprehend sentences in a recursive way.Objective:Our purpose is to test two main hypotheses on the relationship between false-belief understanding and the ability to master the syntax of complementation: the dependence and the independence of false-belief understanding on syntactic complementation.Method:We analyze studies on children with typical development, deaf children with deaf signing or hearing parents, children with specific language impairment, children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, longitudinal and training studies, and studies on adults with neuropsychological disorders.Conclusion:Strengths and weaknesses of the two hypotheses are discussed and limitations of the current state of knowledge are presented. A lifespan approach taking into account both the emergence and maintenance of false-belief understanding and using both implicit and explicit false-belief tasks is proposed to face the issue discussed.

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“…Digit span is an index of verbal memory, likely to relate to sentence repetition, though sentence repetition involves the additional factor of morphosyntax understanding. Theory of Mind, especially understanding another's false belief, has been found to be linked to language skills, whether the measure is general vocabulary (Astington & Baird, 2005), general syntax (Farrar, Benigno, Tompkins & Gage, 2017), or specifically sentence complementation (San Juan & Astington, 2012;de Villiers & de Villiers, 2013).…”

Section: Subject Relative Clausementioning

confidence: 99%

Why Roma Children Need Language Asessments in Romani

Kyuchukov

Villiers

Tabori

2017

Psychology of Language and Communication

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In this paper we make one major point: that Roma children in Europe need to be tested in their mother tongue before school placement. Roma children are in a particularly perilous position with respect to their education. We describe the problematic linguistic situation of Roma children, who are bilingual and often bidialectal, but are frequently evaluated in the language of the state for educational placement, a process that has been shown to significantly compromise their chance of success. We then review the considerable empirical evidence that bilingual children must be evaluated in both languages to give a fair assessment of their knowledge and skills. Furthermore, strength in the mother tongue has demonstrable transfer to skills in the second language. We provide a brief summary of a new assessment for Romani that has been used successfully to evaluate children aged 3 to 6 years, and present the results of a new study using it in Slovakia on 29 children aged 3 to 6 years.

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Are there different pathways to explicit false belief understanding? General language and complementation in typical and atypical children

Cited by 51 publications

References 59 publications

The missing explanation of the false‐belief advantage in bilingual children: a longitudinal study

The missing explanation of the false‐belief advantage in bilingual children: a longitudinal study

On the Relationship between Theory of Mind and Syntax in Clinical and Non-Clinical Populations: State of the Art and Implications for Research

Why Roma Children Need Language Asessments in Romani

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