The impact of verbal capacity on theory of mind in deaf and hard of hearing children.
Even when they have good language skills, many children with hearing loss lag several years behind hearing children in the ability to grasp beliefs of others. The researchers sought to determine whether this lag results from difficulty with the verbal demands of tasks or from conceptual delays. The researchers related children's performance on a nonverbal theory of mind task to their scores on verbal aptitude tests. Twelve French children (average age about 10 years) with severe to profound hearing loss and 12 French hearing children (average about 7 years) were evaluated. The children with hearing loss showed persistent difficulty with theory of mind tasks, even a nonverbal task, presenting results similar to those of hearing 6-year-olds. Also, the children with hearing loss showed a correlation between language level (lexical and morphosyntactic) and understanding of false beliefs. No such correlation was found in the hearing children.
Faculty of Humanities, Social Sciences, and Philosophy, University of Picardie Jules Verne, Amiens, France. Clovis.levrez@laposte.net
Clovis
C
Levrez
Beatrice
B
Bourdin
Barbara
B
Le Driant
Baudouin Forgeot
BF
D'Arc
Luc
L
Vandromme
D000367:Age Factors; D001077:Aptitude Tests; D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development; D032882:Comprehension; D003210:Concept Formation; D012048:Correction of Hearing Impairment / Q000523:psychology*; D003469:Culture; D003638:Deafness / Q000523:psychology / Q000534:rehabilitation; D005260:Female; D034381:Hearing Loss / Q000523:psychology* / Q000534:rehabilitation; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D019986:Persons with Hearing Disabilities / Q000523:psychology* / Q000534:rehabilitation; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D056345:Theory of Mind; D014705:Verbal Behavior