Language and theory-of-mind development in prelingually deafened children with cochlear implants: a preliminary investigation

Abstract

One cognitive domain in which deaf children are known to lag behind their hearing peers is that of 'theory of mind'. Impoverished early conversational experience and deprivation of discussion about intangible mental states are seen as likely contributors to this deficit. The present study explored the relation between language and theory-of-mind capabilities in prelingually deafened children aged 4 to 11 years who were cochlear implant users. The children completed theory-of-mind tasks that indexed their ability to reason about conflicting mental representations, namely the understanding of false belief and the distinction between appearance and reality. Controlling for age, language ability was found to correlate positively and reliably with theory-of-mind performance.

Can You Hear What I Think? Theory of Mind in Young Children With Moderate Hearing Loss

“…This difference can be explained by the quality and quantity of communication. Both deaf children who acquire oral communication and deaf children who acquire sign language relatively late (because it is their second language) may encounter limited participation in high-quality social interactions involving mental state talk, be it in school or with their family at home (Jeanes et al 2000;Macaulay & Ford 2006;Ziv et al 2013).…”

False Belief Development in Children Who Are Hard of Hearing Compared With Peers With Normal Hearing

“…Studies of a new generation of deaf children with CIs draw mixed conclusions about FB development. Some report that FB understanding is delayed (Ketelaar, Rieffe, Wiefferink, & Frijns, 2012;Macaulay & Ford, 2006;Peterson, 2004), whereas others suggest that children with early access to CIs (before age 27 months) are less delayed in FB than those implanted later (Sundqvist, Lyxell, Jönsson, & Heimann, 2014). In conclusion, some studies find little or no delay in spoken language in children with early access to CIs (Peters, Remmel, & Richards, 2009;Ziv, Most, & Cohen, 2013).…”

False belief understanding in deaf children: what are the difficulties?

“…However, studies examining the development of social perspective-taking abilities among children with CIs have produced mixed findings. Some studies indicate that these children demonstrate a disadvantage in VS -ER tasks compared to typically developing hearing children ( Peterson, 2004 ; Walker et al, 2017 ; Akkaya and Doğan, 2023 ), while others suggest comparable performance between the two groups ( Remmel and Peters, 2009 ) (also see Lundy, 2002 ; Macaulay and Ford, 2006 ; Moeller and Schick, 2006 , for studies involving diverse samples of deaf children with and without CIs). In a recent study conducted by Meristo et al (2016) , preschool children with CIs were evaluated using both VS -ER and NV-SR tasks.…”