Assessing the construct validity of a theory of mind battery adapted to Tunisian school-aged children

Abstract

BackgroundTheory of mind (ToM) refers to the ability to understand others’ states of mind, desires, emotions, beliefs, and intentions to predict the content of their mental representations. Two major dimensions within ToM have been studied. The first is the type of inferred mental state, which can be cognitive or affective. The second comprises the types of processes involved according to their degree of complexity (first- and second-order false belief and advanced ToM). ToM acquisition is fundamental—a key component in the development of everyday human social interactions. ToM deficits have been reported in various neurodevelopmental disorders through various tools assessing disparate facets of social cognition. Nevertheless, Tunisian practitioners and researchers lack a linguistically and culturally appropriate psychometric tool for ToM assessment among school-aged children.ObjectiveTo assess the construct validity of a translated and adapted French ToM Battery for Arabic-speaking Tunisian school-aged children.MethodsThe focal ToM Battery was designed with neuropsychological and neurodevelopmental theory and composed of 10 subtests distributed evenly in three parts: Pre-conceptual, cognitive, and affective ToM. Translated and adapted to the Tunisian sociocultural context, this ToM battery was individually administered to 179 neurotypical Tunisian children (90 girls and 89 boys) aged 7–12 years.ResultsAfter controlling for the age effect, construct validity was empirically confirmed on two dimensions (cognitive and affective) via structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis, demonstrating that this solution has a good fit. The results confirmed that the age affected differentially the performance obtained on ToM tasks based on the two components of the battery.ConclusionOur findings confirm that the Tunisian version of the ToM Battery has robust construct validity for the assessment of cognitive and affective ToM in Tunisian school-aged children; hence, it could be adopted in clinical and research settings.

Psychometric Properties of the Theory of Mind Task Battery (French Version) in Neurotypical Children and Intellectually Disabled Children

“…They move from early, to first-order or basic, and to second-order or advanced ToM capabilities, depending on their age. These findings are consistent with those obtained by previous studies reporting a progression with age in terms of total score and affective ToM and cognitive ToM scores in this Battery [20,24].…”

“…However, between ToM task Battery-vf total score and GEM scores, the partial correlations are no longer significant when age is controlled. In other instrumental studies about this Battery, none of the authors tested its convergent and concurrent validity in controlling for age (e.g., [14,[19][20][21][22][23]50]); therefore, we did not control age.…”

“…Given its interest, recently, researchers translated and adapted the ToM Battery, initially conceived in English, in other languages (e.g., Spanish, [19]; Tunisian Arabic, [20]; Chinese, [21]; Brazilian Portuguese, [22]; Hebrew, [23]; French, [16,24]). However, in these previous adaptation and validation studies, the sample sizes were often very limited, and children's age ranges varied from one study to another.…”

“…The score in the ToM Battery has also been used to study the link between cerebral activity in emotion recognition and processing by children with autism spectrum disorder [31]. The ToM Battery has also been used as a pre-and post-test to assess the effectiveness of intervention (e.g., [20,25,39,40]). In developmental psychopathology and neuropsychology, as intricate links between ToM and empathy have been postulated, recent studies have begun the investigation of links between affective and cognitive ToM and the three dimensions of empathy.…”

A bibliometric analysis of autism spectrum disorder signaling pathways research in the past decade

“…These studies concentrate on various aspects of ASD in Tunisia, thoroughly investigating and analyzing multiple dimensions, including biology, cognition, psychosocial factors, and immunology. The research explores the impact of gut microbiota ( 59 ) and genomic variations ( 60 ) on patients, elucidating challenges in cognitive abilities ( 61 ), emotional recognition ( 62 ), and familial issues ( 63 ). Furthermore, investigations into immunological characteristics contribute to comprehending the pathological mechanisms of autism ( 64 ).…”