A Systematic Review on the Association Between Bilingualism and Theory of Mind in Adulthood.

IF 2.5 3区心理学 Q2 PSYCHOLOGY, MULTIDISCIPLINARY

Behavioral Sciences Pub Date : 2025-06-13 DOI:10.3390/bs15060815

Rowena J Xia, Brian W Haas

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Abstract

Previous research on the relationship of bilingualism and theory of mind has largely focused on children. However, several recent studies of the theory of mind have found differences in theory of mind processing among older populations, namely adults. Given that language has been found to play an important role in the successful theory of the mind task performance of adults, it is valuable to understand the relationship of the language ability of bilingualism and theory of mind in adults. The specific focus is on studies comparing monolinguals and bilinguals in a theory of mind assessment for an adult sample. In this systematic review, we reviewed and analyzed these studies and conducted a meta-analysis. Among the studies included for meta-analysis (k = 7), we found a significant small-to-medium effect size (d = 0.429, p < 0.0001), indicating a bilingual advantage among adults. A variety of different measures for theory of mind were included in these studies. More studies are required to better understand the relationship between multiple language processing and social cognition among adults to better understand this gap in the literature.

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双语与成人心理理论关系的系统综述。

以往关于双语与心理理论关系的研究主要集中在儿童身上。然而，最近几项关于心智理论的研究发现，老年人（即成年人）在心智理论处理方面存在差异。鉴于语言在成功的成人心理任务执行理论中发挥了重要作用，理解双语者的语言能力与成人心理理论的关系是有价值的。具体的重点是研究比较单语者和双语者在心理理论评估成人样本。在本系统综述中，我们对这些研究进行了回顾和分析，并进行了荟萃分析。在纳入meta分析的研究中（k = 7），我们发现了显著的中小型效应量（d = 0.429, p < 0.0001），表明双语在成人中具有优势。这些研究中包含了各种不同的心理理论测量方法。为了更好地理解这一文献空白，需要更多的研究来更好地理解成人多语言加工与社会认知之间的关系。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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