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.     

The non-specificity of theory of mind deficits: Evidence from children with communicative disabilities

The aim of the present paper was to investigate the performance on theory of mind tasks of four different clinical groups: children with deficits in attention, motor control and perception (DAMP), children with autism, children with Asperger syndrome, and non-vocal cerebral-palsied children. The children with DAMP performed on the same level as the comparison group on the first and second order theory of mind task. The children with autism and Asperger syndrome performed somewhat lower than the children with DAMP and the comparison group. However, in respect of the specifcity issue, only 6 out of 14 of the non-vocal participants successfully solved the first order theory of mind task, while 13 out of 14 children in a comparison group did. The children were matched for chronological age and IQ. The findings suggest that deficits in theory of mind are not specific to the autistic continuum, but can be found in other groups with communicative disabilities, implying that linguistic and communicative skills are important precursors in the development of theory of mind. The study also shows that severe dysfunction in attention, motor control, and perception is not associated with any theory of mind difficulties.     

Personality traits in women with Turner syndrome

Turner syndrome is caused by the total or partial absence of, or structural abnormalities in, one sex chromosome. A personality style characterized by traits related to low neuroticism and high extroversion has been reported for females with Turner syndrome, indicating possible genetic factors related to personality development. This study examines personality traits in 37 Swedish women with Turner syndrome using the Karolinska Scales of Personality Inventory. Compared to reference data, the subjects rated themselves as more sensation seeking, less detached, less verbally aggressive and less irritated. These results partially support previous findings. The subjects were divided into three karyotype groups: 45,X (n = 13), 45,X/46,XX or 45,X/45,XY (n = 13), and structural abnormalities (n = 11). Contrary to some previous findings, no differences in personality were found between the karyotype groups.     

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.     

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.     

Preschool Children's Mastery of the Form/Content Distinction in Communicative Tasks

Preschoolers' mastery of the form/content distinction in language and communication, along its contingency on the characteristics of particular task requirements and test procedures, was investigated in two studies. The theoretical concepts principle of contrast and theory of mind are closely related to the studies. A paraphrase task and a referential communication task were used. In the paraphrase task, children from 3 to 6 years of age acted as messengers and judged whether or not a paraphrase of a message was the same as what the child had said. The results in Study 1 indicated that children as young as 3 years of age recognized this kind of form/content distinction. Fewer children, in particular the younger ones, succeeded with the referential communication task in Study 1. However, among the 6-year-olds, the two tasks showed a tendency to be significantly related. In Study 2, performance decreased among children of all ages, but in particular among the youngest children. In Study 2, the two form/content tasks were not correlated in any age group. The general conclusion is that there is a range of tasks, which may reveal awareness of the form/content distinction among young children, and that it is possible to construct tasks which would enable young children to pay attention to this distinction. Aspects of awareness of the form/content distinction may start to develop early during the preschool period, rather than appearing around the school start. However, the question of why only some children, and not the majority of them, develop this distinction at a very young age is unsettled, as well as the consequences of this early development later on at school.     

The health preoccupation diagnostic interview: inter-rater reliability of a structured interview for diagnostic assessment of DSM-5 somatic symptom disorder and illness anxiety disorder

Somatic symptom disorder (SSD) and illness anxiety disorder (IAD) are two new diagnoses introduced in the DSM-5. There is a need for reliable instruments to facilitate the assessment of these disorders. We therefore developed a structured diagnostic interview, the Health Preoccupation Diagnostic Interview (HPDI), which we hypothesized would reliably differentiate between SSD, IAD, and no diagnosis. Persons with clinically significant health anxiety (n = 52) and healthy controls (n = 52) were interviewed using the HPDI. Diagnoses were then compared with those made by an independent assessor, who listened to audio recordings of the interviews. Ratings generally indicated moderate to almost perfect inter-rater agreement, as illustrated by an overall Cohen’s κ of .85. Disagreements primarily concerned (a) the severity of somatic symptoms, (b) the differential diagnosis of panic disorder, and (c) SSD specifiers. We conclude that the HPDI can be used to reliably diagnose DSM-5 SSD and IAD.