Longitudinal Theory of Mind (ToM) Development From Preschool to Adolescence With and Without ToM Delay

Abstract

Longitudinal tracking of 107 three- to-thirteen-year-olds in a cross-sequential design showed a 6-step theory of mind (ToM) sequence identified by a few past cross-sectional studies validly depicted longitudinal ToM development from early to middle childhood for typically developing (TD) children and those with ToM delays owing to deafness or autism. Substantively, all groups showed ToM progress throughout middle childhood. Atypical development was more extended and began and ended at lower levels than for TD children. Yet most children in all groups progressed over the study's mean 1.5 years. Findings help resolve theoretical debates about ToM development for children with and without delay and gain strength and weight via their applicability to three disparate groups varying in ToM timing and sequencing.

Reduced Neural Selectivity for Mental States in Deaf Children with Delayed Exposure to Sign Language

“…Thus linguistic narratives may actually facilitate children's ability to encode, mentally manipulate, and retrieve complex mental state concepts 62 . Relatedly, children's receptive ASL proficiency highly correlated with performance on the minimally linguistic ToM task, consistent with prior studies 32,34,63,64 (though see 65,66 In sum, our behavioral results replicate prior findings that delayed access to language can delay children's performance on ToM tasks [29][30][31][32][33][34]36,67,68 , even in children who are fluent in ASL.…”

“…Many deaf or hard-of-hearing children are at risk of not learning any language in early childhood because they have limited auditory access to spoken language and their families do not know sign language at the time of birth 28 . Deaf children with delayed exposure to sign language show delays in ToM relative to hearing children and to deaf children exposed to sign language from infancy [29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37] .Interestingly, this delay appears not to be fully explained by the linguistic demands of ToM tasks. Delayed exposure to sign language affects performance on linguistic and minimally linguistic false belief tasks [29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36] , and even on non-linguistic anticipatory looking paradigms 37 .…”

“…Deaf children with delayed exposure to sign language show delays in ToM relative to hearing children and to deaf children exposed to sign language from infancy [29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37] .Interestingly, this delay appears not to be fully explained by the linguistic demands of ToM tasks. Delayed exposure to sign language affects performance on linguistic and minimally linguistic false belief tasks [29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36] , and even on non-linguistic anticipatory looking paradigms 37 . Also, the effects on ToM are correlated not just with the child's language abilities, but specifically with the richness of maternal mental state language 38 Human adults and children recruit a specific cortical network when reasoning about the minds of others, including bilateral temporoparietal junction (TPJ), precuneus, and medial prefrontal cortex 39,40 .…”

“…is, all children were better able to reason about false beliefs when the scenario was presented with a linguistic narrative, than when presented with pictures alone (see also 36 ). Thus linguistic narratives may actually facilitate children's ability to encode, mentally manipulate, and retrieve complex mental state concepts 62 .…”

Explaining the Unpredictable: The Development of Causal Theories of Mind in Deaf and Hearing Children

“…This unusually protracted timetable for spontaneous ToM mastery by DoH children is instructive. In contrast to TD children, who ordinarily master FB so rapidly that spontaneous gains might arise without intervention between pretest and delayed posttest, this was much less likely for our DoH children (Peterson & Wellman, in press). Also, unlike some past studies of hearing preschoolers (e.g., Amsterlaw & Wellman, ), our focal training intervention did not include either practice with FBP or feedback on explanation or prediction accuracy.…”