{"title":"Early bilingualism enhances theory of mind in children from low-income households via executive function skills","authors":"Rong Huang , Erin Ruth Baker , Tianlin Wang","doi":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2023.101389","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The study focuses on children in poverty and investigates whether early bilingualism enhances economically disadvantaged children’s Theory of Mind (ToM), and what role Executive Function plays in the relation between bilingualism and ToM. Sixty-eight preschool-aged children (35 English monolinguals, 51.4% boys, and 33 English-Spanish bilingual children, 57.5% boys) from low-income backgrounds completed standardized language assessments, three executive function tasks, and a five-task ToM battery. Results showed that after controlling for children’s age, income-to-needs ratio, and English proficiency, bilingual children demonstrated greater ToM competence compared to monolingual children. A higher degree of bilingualism was associated with better ToM performance in bilingual children. Mediation analyses showed that children’s working memory and attention shifting accounted for the links between bilingualism and ToM. The findings suggest that an early bilingual learning experience may facilitate preschool children’s ToM development in economically disadvantaged environments, and this relation was differentially impacted by executive function components.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51422,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Development","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8000,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Cognitive Development","FirstCategoryId":"102","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0885201423000941","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"PSYCHOLOGY, DEVELOPMENTAL","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The study focuses on children in poverty and investigates whether early bilingualism enhances economically disadvantaged children’s Theory of Mind (ToM), and what role Executive Function plays in the relation between bilingualism and ToM. Sixty-eight preschool-aged children (35 English monolinguals, 51.4% boys, and 33 English-Spanish bilingual children, 57.5% boys) from low-income backgrounds completed standardized language assessments, three executive function tasks, and a five-task ToM battery. Results showed that after controlling for children’s age, income-to-needs ratio, and English proficiency, bilingual children demonstrated greater ToM competence compared to monolingual children. A higher degree of bilingualism was associated with better ToM performance in bilingual children. Mediation analyses showed that children’s working memory and attention shifting accounted for the links between bilingualism and ToM. The findings suggest that an early bilingual learning experience may facilitate preschool children’s ToM development in economically disadvantaged environments, and this relation was differentially impacted by executive function components.
期刊介绍:
Cognitive Development contains the very best empirical and theoretical work on the development of perception, memory, language, concepts, thinking, problem solving, metacognition, and social cognition. Criteria for acceptance of articles will be: significance of the work to issues of current interest, substance of the argument, and clarity of expression. For purposes of publication in Cognitive Development, moral and social development will be considered part of cognitive development when they are related to the development of knowledge or thought processes.