Abstract

The focus of this work is the influence of bilingualism on the development of Theory of Mind (ToM) in bilingual children. We examined the understanding of preschool children, looking at how observers can have different thoughts and beliefs on the same facts or the same situation and can be wrong. 40 children between the ages of 3 to 5 years old participated In the study. Twenty spoke German only and 20 were German-Russian bilinguals. In addition to a ToM battery, which consisted of six first-order False Belief tasks, the children were given two language tests to determine the scope of their active and passive vocabulary (Expressive One-word Picture Vocabulary Test and Receptive One-word Picture Vocabulary Test). The language skills and ToM abilities of bilingual children were tested in German and in Russian. Monolingual German speaking children served as a control group. Contrasting with previous literature findings and our hypotheses, we found no positive effect of bilingualism on the development of the Theory of Mind. On the contrary, the monolingual children showed significantly better ToM performance than the bilinguals. On average, the bilingual children had significantly poorer language skills in German language in comparison with the monolingual children.

Authors and Affiliations