In order for children to construct representations of mental states, they have to observe others and engage in conversations about mental states. And, in order to do these things, children must have language. A growing number of studies show that children’s successes on false-belief tasks depend on conversational experience and awareness. For instance, advanced understanding of false beliefs is found among preschoolers who often exchange mental-state terms in conversations with family and friends.
Deaf Children’s Development of Theory of Mind
There has been extensive research done on theory of mind development in hearing children, but just in recent years has any research been done of this theory in deaf children. The research that does exist distinguishes between two groups: the majority of deaf children are born to hearing parents and the small percentage of deaf children who are born to two deaf parents.
While deaf children born into signing families acquire theory of mind about the same time as hearing children, prior to kindergarten (Astington, 1993), deaf children born to most hearing parents are likely to experience a three-year delay in developing theory of mind (Lundy, 2002). Researchers suspect this delay has something to do with the lack of communication between hearing parents and their young deaf children about mental states (Courtin, 2000). The distinguishable difference between these two groups is language.
In most cases, hearing parents with deaf children do not know sign language. They may create “home signs”, which are signs for objects or actions around the home. For instance, parents may create a sign for “I’m hungry”. Using home signs can be an easy way for families to communicate, but children are not granted access to meaningful and explorative conversations with these home signs. The problem with this is that the interaction between the parents and children does not include communication about mental states. Their limited knowledge, if any, of signed language, does not include signs about mental states. So, generally, deaf children of hearing parents receive little or no explanations of feelings, attitudes, or reasoning behind actions. It is important to understand that the reason for this is not because of the lack of complexity of signed languages. American Sign Language, or ASL, is very capable of describing mental states, just as capable as any spoken language. It is the fact that these children do not have any language. They cannot hear their parent’s spoken language, and their hearing parents are unable to teach them ASL or another form of signed language.
The cases of deaf children born to deaf parents are very different. These children are native users of ASL. Their parents are able to communicate about feelings and attitudes through their signed language. Because they do not experience a language barrier, the children are able to develop knowledge of mental states, and that the mental states of others may vary from their own and from others.
A number of studies show evidence that both oral and signing deaf children of hearing families were delayed in their development of theory of mind (Gale, 1995). While four year old hearing children are able to realize that different individuals have different views and ideas about reality, deaf children are not able to do the same. Clearly, these researchers view language as a critical tool for internalizing representations of alternate mental states. If, indeed, language does play a crucial role in theory of mind acquisition, than there needs to be drastic improvements and changes made in the realm of deaf education.
Study on consequences of delayed development An interesting yet simple study was done to examine the effect of deaf children’s theory of mind impairment on their social functioning. This study was designed to explore one of the common interaction patterns that could possibly contribute to the “lack of understanding between deaf children born to hearing parents and their environment: deaf children’s negotiation behavior” (Rieffe & Terwogt, 2004). The term negotiation means to agree upon a compromise in a situation where two parties have conflicting views and interests, but both want to achieve the best possible end result. Negotiating behavior is linked with children’s theory of mind capacities in two ways. First of all, for two parties to negotiate, they must have different interests in mind. Thus, negotiating would require both parties to be aware of the other’s views and stance in an effort to back-up one’s own premise. Secondly, if someone is negotiating, they are striving to reach their own desired goal, and, since they have such an encompassing self-driven focus, it would be even more difficult to have the opponent’s perspective in mind. A key prerequisite in one’s theory of mind development is the understanding that others may have different views and goals regarding the same situation.
Considering that “the acknowledgement that desires are subjective precedes the acknowledgement concerning beliefs. Therefore, testing children’s belief-desire reasoning is usually focused on the belief aspect. The so-called false-belief paradigm is the most widely used criterion” (Rieffe Terwogt, 2004).
An example of this criterion is called the “Sally-Ann” task (Baron-Cohen, Leslie, & Frith, 1985). First, children see Ann enter the scene, put a marble in a box, and then leave. Next the children see Sally move the marble from the box to a basket. Following this, when Ann returns to the scene, the participants of the study are asked: “Where will Ann look for her marble?” Children with a more developed and active theory of mind will answer that Ann will look for her marble in the box where she left it, even though they know the marble has been moved. This simple false-belief task does not present a problem for hearing five-year olds or for deaf children born to deaf parents (Courtin & Melot, 1998). It does, however, present a problem with deaf children born to hearing parents. In fact, even a ten-year old deaf child born to deaf parents often fails to give the right answer (Peterson & Siegal, 1995).
Social consequences of delayed development Due to their delayed development of theory of mind, deaf children may have “profound and extended problems in understanding people, social events, interpersonal relationships, literacy competence, and vocabulary” (Lundy, 1999). These developmental encounters are far from optimal and affect their everyday lives.
Deaf children may feel less accepted by their hearing peers. They may struggle to comprehend the “social rules of friendship”, they easily and quickly “attribute hostile intentions to others”, and while they can be persistent in social settings, they are “less competent in expressing their emotions in social conflicts. Each of these factors might contribute to the tendency of some authors to consider a relatively large percentage of deaf children as stubborn and hard to handle. However, an underlying common factor might be their frequently noted impaired development of theory of mind, which refers to an understanding that people do not react to situations as such, but rather to their desires and their beliefs about that situations” (Rieffe & Terwogt, 2004).
Conclusion
After exploring the development of deaf children, with both hearing parents and deaf parents, it appears that language plays a major role in a child’s development of a mature theory of mind. It is safe to say that without language, children’s development of this theory is delayed.
References
Astington, J. (1993). The child's discovery of the mind. Harvard University Press.
Baron-Cohen, S., Leslie, A.M., & Frith, U. (1985). Does the autistic child have a ‘theory
of mind’? Cognition. Vol 21.
Courtin, C. (2000). The impact of sign language on the cognitive development of deaf
children: The case of theories of mind. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf
Education. Vol 5, 266-276.
Courtin, C., & Melot, A.M. (1998). Development of theories of mind in deaf children.
In M. Marschark & M. Clard (Eds.), Psychological perspectives on Deafness:
Vol 2 (pp. 79-102). Mahway, NJ: Erlbaum.
Gale, E. de Villiers, P.A., de Villers, J.G., and Pyers, J. (1995). Language and theory of
mind in oral deaf children. Presentation at the 20th Annual Boston University
Conference on Language Development, Boston, MA.
Lundy, Jean E.B. “Perspectives in Education and Deafness”. Theory of Mind:
Development in Deaf Children. Vol 18. No 1. Sept/Oct 1999.
Lundy, Jean E.B. Age and language skills of deaf children in relation to theory of mind
development. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education. Vol 7, 41-56. 2002.
Malle, B. (2001). The evolution of language out of pre-language. Institute of Cognitive
and Decision Sciences. Eugene, Oregon, May 2001.
Peterson, C.C., & Siegal, M. (1995). Deafness, Conversation, and Theory of Mind.
Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 36, 459-474.
Rieffe, C., & Terwogt, M. Deaf children’s use of beliefs and desires in negotiation.
Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education. Vol 9. 2004.
. Schick, B. (1998). Theory of Mind
and Language Skills.
