First‐hand sensory experience plays a limited role in children's early understanding of seeing and hearing as sources of knowledge: Evidence from typically hearing and deaf children

One early‐developing component of theory of mind is an understanding of the link between sensory perception and knowledge formation. We know little about the extent to which children's first‐hand sensory experiences drive the development of this understanding, as most tasks capturing this early understanding target vision, with less attention paid to the other senses. In this study, 64 typically hearing children (M_age = 4.0 years) and 21 orally educated deaf children (M_age = 5.44 years) were asked to identify which of two informants knew the identity of a toy animal when each had differing perceptual access to the animal. In the ‘seeing’ condition, one informant saw the animal and the other did not; in the ‘hearing’ condition, one informant heard the animal and the other did not. For both hearing and deaf children, there was no difference between performance on hearing and seeing trials, but deaf children were delayed in both conditions. Further, within both the hearing and deaf groups, older children outperformed younger children on these tasks, indicating that there is a developmental progression. Taken together, the pattern of results suggests that experiences other than first‐hand sensory experiences drive children's developing understanding that sensory perception is associated with knowledge.     

Development of social-cognitive and communication skills in children born deaf

Central to the interface of social-cognitive and communicative development is the growth of a theory of mind (ToM). ToM is mastered by most hearing children and deaf children of signing deaf parents by the age of 5 or 6 but is often seriously delayed in deaf children of hearing parents. This paper reviews recently published research on deaf children's ToM development and presents an original study consisting of eight longitudinal case histories that collectively map late-signing deaf children's ToM performance from 44 to 158 months of age. While five tentative conclusions can be posited from the collective research so far, further investigation of each of these possibilities is clearly needed.     

Understanding of friendship and social rules in deaf and hearing adolescents

Children who are profoundly and prelingually deaf and live in residential schools lack ready access to the general language environment and some opportunities of societial interactions. How does this affect their understanding of the social world To probe this question 60 deaf and 60 hearing children, ages 9, 13, and 17, were interviewed regarding friendship and social rules (a game rule, a school rule, driving law). Summary scores for each of the 4 areas yielded age and hearing differences. The major findings were: (1) the developmental pattern of responses was similar for deaf and hearing children; (2) deaf children lagged behind hearing children in their social understanding, most in game rules, least in friendship. The results were related to a constructivist developmental perspective and to previous research on socialization of deaf children.     

聋童与正常儿童对假装表征、模仿性假装和欺骗性假装的认识

本研究认为,对假装的认识包含理解假装表征、模仿性假装和欺骗性假装。选取了86名3-5岁的学前儿童和122名3-12岁的聋童,考察他们对假装上述内容的认知情况及差异。结果表明：（1）当假装任务中涉及的事物特征不符合儿童经验时,9岁前的聋童和正常学前儿童难以理解假装表征和模仿性假装。反之若符合儿童的经验,大部分3岁正常儿童及7岁聋童就能正确理解上述内容;（2）5岁正常儿童和7岁聋童已能正确理解欺骗性假装,这比他们在同样情境下理解假装的表征和模仿性假装的年龄要迟。（3）聋童理解假装问题要比正常儿童滞后2-4年,但他们正确理解这些问题的年龄起点及达到的程度与正常儿童可能是一致的,而且发展的趋势也是相似的。（4）手语聋童理解假装问题的成绩好于口语聋童,那些父母会手语或父母是聋人的聋童的成绩好于其他聋童。本研究的结论是：低龄正常儿童和聋童还难以真正理解假装表征;聋童对假装的认识比正常儿童滞后2-4年,但发展趋势相似;聋童自身的手语水平及其父母的手语水平是影响他们理解假装的主要因素。     

The role of experience and discourse in children's developing understanding of pretend play actions

The present work investigated the development of an explicit understanding of pretend play actions. Study 1 revealed a long décalage between earlier implicit understanding of pretence as an intentional activity and a later more explicit understanding. Study 2 was a training study. It tested for two factors – systematic pretence experience and explicit pretence discourse – that may be important in development from early implicit to later explicit pretence understanding. Two training groups of 3.5‐year‐old children received the same pretence experiences involving systematic contrasts between pretending, really performing and trying to perform actions. In the ‘explicit’ group, these experiences were talked about with explicit ‘pretend to’ and ‘pretend that’ language. In the ‘implicit’ group no such discourse was used, but only implicit discourse in talking about pretence versus real actions. The two training groups were compared with a control group that received functional play experience. After training, only the explicit group showed improvement in their explicit pretence understanding. In none of the groups was there any transfer to tasks tapping mental state understanding, false belief (FB) and appearance‐reality, (A‐R). The findings are discussed in the context of current theories about the developmental relations between pretence, discourse, and mental state understanding.     

Children's understanding of their own and others' mental states. Part A. Self‐understanding precedes understanding of others in pretence

We examined 3‐ to 6‐year‐old children's attributions of pretence when their own or another's behaviours were characterized as similar (usually unintentionally) to that of a real or nonexistent animal. In some pretence tasks, we asked children if they were trying to look like or looked like the animal they were characterized as looking like; in others, if and how they could (or why they could not) pretend to be a real or nonexistent animal. Children at 4–6 years of age understood their own pretences better than another's pretences, but even by 6 years of age children continued to fail to understand pretence by another. Across ages children tended to be consistent in their claims about whether or not they looked liked (or were trying to look like) the animal, and whether or not they were pretending to be it. Children appear to take someone's merely looking like an animal as evidence that the person (whether self or other) is pretending to be that animal. Their success on self‐pretence tasks probably results from their unwillingness to believe that their own actions look like those of the animal because they had not intended to look like it.     

Awareness and regulation of emotions in deaf children

In this study, deaf children's understanding of their own emotions was compared with that of hearing peers. Twenty‐six deaf children (mean age 11 years) and 26 hearing children, matched for age and gender, were presented with various tasks that tap into their emotion awareness and regulation (coping) regarding the four basic emotions (happiness, anger, sadness, and fear). The findings suggest that deaf children have no difficulties in identifying their own basic emotions and the elicitors, or multiple emotions of opposite valence (happy and sad). Yet, they did show an impaired capacity to differentiate between their own emotions within the negative spectrum, which suggests a more generic evaluation of the situation. Deaf children's emotion regulation strategies showed a strong preference for approaching the situation at hand, but almost no deaf child reported the use of an avoidant tactic in order to diminish the negative impact of the situation. Overall, deaf children's emotion regulation strategies seemed less effective than those of their hearing peers. The implications for deaf children's emotional development are discussed.     

Social interaction and cognitive growth: An examination through the role‐taking skills of deaf and hearing children

Recent research using theory‐of‐mind tasks has rekindled interest in the possibility that social interaction makes a significant contribution to cognitive development. It is proposed here that this contribution may be most pronounced with phenomena that, like belief or affective states, are internal and abstract. A more modest contribution is envisaged with phenomena that are overt and perceptible. The proposal is explored via comparison of deaf and hearing children's ability to engage in affective and perceptual role‐taking, since the aspects of social interaction that have been implicated in cognitive development are known to be problematic for deaf children. Therefore, the proposal of more marked consequences for internal and abstract phenomena leads to the hypothesis that deaf children should lag behind hearing children on affective role‐taking, while showing little or no difference on perceptual role‐taking. The hypothesis was tested in two studies, one involving 10 deaf children and 10 hearing children aged 6.94– 8.93 years and the other involving 25 deaf children and 20 hearing children aged 5.08– 11.58 years. In both studies, affective role‐taking was examined using a task developed from Chandler (1973), while perceptual role‐taking was examined via an extension of Hughes and Donaldson's (1979) hiding task. The results provide consistent support for the hypothesis, and patterns of correlation between age, affective performance and perceptual performance give clues to the relevant developmental mechanisms.     

Language access and theory of mind reasoning: evidence from deaf children in bilingual and oralist environments

This investigation examined whether access to sign language as a medium for instruction influences theory of mind (ToM) reasoning in deaf children with similar home language environments. Experiment 1 involved 97 deaf Italian children ages 4-12 years: 56 were from deaf families and had LIS (Italian Sign Language) as their native language, and 41 had acquired LIS as late signers following contact with signers outside their hearing families. Children receiving bimodal/bilingual instruction in LIS together with Sign-Supported and spoken Italian significantly outperformed children in oralist schools in which communication was in Italian and often relied on lipreading. Experiment 2 involved 61 deaf children in Estonia and Sweden ages 6-16 years. On a wide variety of ToM tasks, bilingually instructed native signers in Estonian Sign Language and spoken Estonian succeeded at a level similar to age-matched hearing children. They outperformed bilingually instructed late signers and native signers attending oralist schools. Particularly for native signers, access to sign language in a bilingual environment may facilitate conversational exchanges that promote the expression of ToM by enabling children to monitor others' mental states effectively.     

Maternal Sensitivity and the Visual Attentiveness of Children Who Are Deaf

Maternal sensitivity may be even more important for the development of deaf infants' social and cognitive competence than previous research has shown it to be for hearing children. We report ratings of mothers' sensitivity and infants' time in coordinated joint attention (CJA) during play interactions video-taped in a laboratory at 9,12 and 18 months. Participants include 80 dyads in four groups: two matched for hearing status (Deaf or Hearing mothers with deaf or hearing babies), two unmatched for hearing status (Deaf mothers/hearing babies and Hearing mothers/deaf babies). Mothers in matched dyads were rated more sensitive than mothers in unmatched dyads. Deaf infants with Deaf mothers showed more time in CJA compared to infants in unmatched dyads. However, significant correlations of sensitivity and attention were found only for the two unmatched hearing status groups at 18 months. These results are discussed in terms of dyadic hearing status differences, intuitive parenting and developmental stage. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Language First: Deaf Children from Deaf Families Spontaneously Anticipate False Beliefs

ABSTRACT

Being connected to other people at the level of inner and unobservable mental states is one of the most essential aspects of a meaningful life, including psychological well-being and successful cooperation. The foundation for this kind of connectedness is our theory of mind (ToM), that is the ability to understand our own and others’ inner experiences in terms of mental states such as beliefs and desires. But how do we develop this ability? Forty-six 17- to 107-months-old children completed a non-verbal eye-tracker false-belief task. There were 9 signing deaf children from deaf families and two comparison groups, that is 13 deaf children with cochlear implants and 24 typically developing hearing children. We show that typically developing hearing children and deaf children from deaf families, but not deaf children with cochlear implants, succeeded on a non-verbal eye-tracking ToM task. The findings suggest that the ability to recognize others’ mental states is supported by very early, continuous and fluent language-based communication with caregivers.     

Executive Functions and Theory-of-Mind Among Deaf Children: Different Routes to Understanding Other Minds?

The aim of the present study was to investigate the role of executive functions (EF) in theory-of-mind (ToM) performance in deaf children and adolescents. Four groups of deaf children aged 7–16 years, with different language backgrounds at home and at school, that is, bilingually instructed native signers, oralist-instructed native signers, and two groups of bilingually instructed late signers from Sweden and Estonia, respectively, were given eight ToM and four EF measures. The bilingually instructed native signers performed at a significantly higher level on the ToM measures than the other groups of deaf children. On the EF measures, there were no significant differences found between any of the groups, with one exception—the Swedish bilingual late signers had a significantly shorter average reaction time on the go-no-go inhibition task than the oralist native signers and the Estonian bilingual late signers. However, the Swedish children's better EF performance was not mirrored in better performance on ToM tasks. Our results indicate that despite all deaf children's good general cognitive abilities, there were still differences in their performance on ToM tasks that need to be explained in other terms. Thus, whatever the cause of late signers' difficulties with ToM, poor EF-skills seem to be of minor importance.     

心理弹性儿童的心理理论

本研究探讨了心理弹性儿童与缺乏心理弹性儿童心理理论的差异及其心理弹性发展意蕴。对523名从小学三年级至初中二年级中小学生利用多信源汇聚操作甄别法,通过逆境/压力综合评定与心理社会发展功能综合评定,甄别出心理弹性儿童99人和缺乏心理弹性儿童176人。对全部被试施测12类心理理论任务。在控制了阅读能力、性别和年龄所进行的多元协方差分析(MANCOVA)结果发现：心理弹性儿童在心理理论得分总体上显著高于缺乏心理弹性儿童;对12类任务分别进行协方差分析(ANCOVA)表明,两组儿童心理理论得分显著性差异主要体现在诸如假装、讽刺、说服、双重欺骗、误解等5类任务上,白谎任务上组间差异临界显著,其余任务组间差异未达统计学意义显著性水平。以年龄和性别为控制变量所进行的偏相关分析结果提示,心理理论与心理社会发展功能之间存在显著的正向关联。最后较详细讨论了心理理论对心理弹性发展的意义。     

纵向再探学前儿童心理理论发展模式

本文作者前不久完成的一项横断设计研究中, 以自编的心理理论量表测查比较了中美两国3~5岁儿童的有关发展。量表包括五项任务: (1) 不同的愿望; (2) 知与不知; (3) 不同的信念; (4) 内容错误信念和 (5) 伪装的情绪。研究发现两种不同文化群体儿童对上述任务的理解均表现出稳定一致的发展次序, 两者的次序大致相同但具有重要差别: 我国儿童的理解次序如从易到难排列如上所列, 这一次序与美国儿童的差别在于我国儿童先理解“知与不知”, 然后是“不同的信念”, 而美国儿童则恰好相反。这一研究结果对了解不同文化儿童心理理论的发展次序是十分有意义的, 但问题是经由横断设计的量表研究所确立的发展次序能否准确地描述个体儿童的纵向进展呢? 为此本研究使用了相同的测量工具对参加过横断研究的北京3岁儿童(时间1)在他们4岁(时间2)和5岁(时间3)时进行了焦点追踪研究。研究结果表明, 随着测查时间的 延伸, 个体儿童的作业成绩不仅逐步提高, 而且这种提高符合量表任务的发展次序。通过应用格特曼(Guttman)和雷氏(Rasch)测量模型对这一结果的分析, 再一次证实我国个体儿童的有关发展次序与欧美文化儿童的发展次序大致相同并且有重要的差别。本研究的结果不仅能为横断研究中个别差异的研究提供有用的工具, 而且深化了人们对心理理论发展机制的认识, 即把心理理论的发展看作是在一定的文化环境影响下不断扩展和深化的概念建构过程。但对这一推论仍有待进一步证实。     

Belief attribution in deaf and hearing infants

Based on anticipatory looking and reactions to violations of expected events, infants have been credited with 'theory of mind' (ToM) knowledge that a person's search behaviour for an object will be guided by true or false beliefs about the object's location. However, little is known about the preconditions for looking patterns consistent with belief attribution in infants. In this study, we compared the performance of 17- to 26-month-olds on anticipatory looking in ToM tasks. The infants were either hearing or were deaf from hearing families and thus delayed in communicative experience gained from access to language and conversational input. Hearing infants significantly outperformed their deaf counterparts in anticipating the search actions of a cartoon character that held a false belief about a target-object location. By contrast, the performance of the two groups in a true belief condition did not differ significantly. These findings suggest for the first time that access to language and conversational input contributes to early ToM reasoning.     

Self‐Regulation: Relations with Theory of Mind and Social Behaviour

It is argued that self‐regulation skill is necessary both for displaying constructive behaviour and for controlling negative social behaviour, and self‐regulation might affect social behaviours by increasing the ability to understand others' minds. In this research, in order to examine different aspects of self‐regulation and their similarities and differences in terms of their relations with other constructs, we focused on both effortful control and executive function and investigated their concurrent associations with socially competent and aggressive behaviours and theory of mind (ToM). The participants were 212 preschool children in Turkey. We assessed executive functions with behavioural measures and effortful control with mother reports. We used six tasks for comprehensive assessment of mental state understanding. Children's social competency and aggressive behaviour were assessed with teacher reports. Structural equation modelling results showed that when age and receptive language were controlled, ToM was significantly associated with social competence but not aggressive behaviour. Both effortful control and executive functions were significantly related to social competency and ToM; the pathways from each self‐regulation skill were similar in strength. ToM was linked with social competence, but it did not have a mediating role in the relations of self‐regulation with social competence. The findings highlighted the importance of self‐regulation for socio‐cognitive and social development in the preschool years. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

聋儿的心理理论发展特点及影响因素

目前,探究聋儿的心理理论（TheoryofMind,ToM）发展特点多从三个方面进行：一是分析聋儿与正常儿童及自闭症儿童ToM水平的差异;二是比较聋父母聋儿、口语聋儿及正常父母聋儿的ToM发展差异;三是分析聋儿对不同心理状态的理解水平。此外,对聋儿ToM发展影响因素的讨论,多是从聋儿交往、语言、训练等角度进行的     

Verbal and nonverbal maternal controls in hearing mother-deaf child interaction

Investigators of mother-child relations have concluded that mothers of deaf children are more controlling than mothers of hearing children. Excessive maternal control has been linked to inoptimal developmental outcomes, such as child dependence, social immaturity, and submissiveness. In the present study, the verbal and nonverbal controls employed by mothers of deaf preschoolers (3.00–6.75 years) versus mothers of hearing preschoolers (3.00–6.42 years) were evaluated. Subjects were 14 hearing mother-deaf child dyads and 14 hearing mother-hearing child dyads. Each dyad was observed during a 15-minute free-play period and during a 7-minute teaching period. Dependent measures were submitted to appropriate 2 (hearing status) by 2 (task) analysis of variance for repeated measures, followed by post hoc comparisons. The results indicated that the mothers of deaf children: (a) used higher rates of nonverbal controls than the mothers of hearing children, especially during the free-play period; and (b) employed higher rates of verbal controls than the mothers of hearing children during the free-play period, but not during the teaching period. In addition, the interaction tasks exerted differential effects on the two groups of mother-child dyads.     

Can 15-month-old infants understand pretence? An investigation using the 'violation-of-expectation' paradigm

Productive tests are unsuitable for measuring infants' earliest understanding of pretence, because performance demands may render infants unable to produce the actions required to pass the test. Recently, Onishi, Baillargeon and Leslie (2007) used the violation-of-expectation (VOE) paradigm as a measure of infants' understanding of others' pretence that is free from such performance demands. They found that 15-month-old infants looked longer at an Unexpected event in which an actor pretended to pour into one cup but pretended to drink from another cup, compared to pretending to pour and drink with the same cup. On this basis, they argued that 15-month-old infants expect others' pretence to be consistent, demonstrating their understanding of others' pretence. However, infants may have responded to expectations they had about familiar action sequences, rather than to pretence per se. To test this hypothesis, the current study firstly replicated Onishi et al.'s results in a sample of 28 typically developing 15-month-old infants, and then added a condition using closely matched real versions of their pretend VOE tasks. It was found that infants looked longer at unexpected events, whether or not the events were real or pretend. It was concluded that 15-month-old infants may look longer at pretend events due to violations of expectations they have about familiar action sequences, rather than because they understand others' pretence behaviour.