Bilingual Children's Theory Of Mind

All Human beings are born with a basic fundamental knowledge of the language and this progresses throughout their lifespan. Developmental psychologists research the developmental trajectory as this shows how the language, reasoning and social skill abilities develop.

There are 4 theoretical perspectives. The different theoretical perspectives vary in their focus on the role of nature and nurture as well as the emphasis on one or more of the five aspects of language knowledge. Throughout this chapter, the focus will be on recognizing how nature and nurture interact and can be related. It provides a framework for understanding the complex ways children develop language as they interact with people and objects in their environment, school and home

In order to function in a social world, acquiring a theory of mind is a fundamental component in a child’s early cognitive development (Premack & Woodruff, 1978; Wellman, 1990). Theory of mind (ToM) is the ability to understand the mental state of one’s self and others (Greene, Sandoval, & Bråten, 2016) and to comprehend and forecast others’ actions (Tager-Flusberg, Baron-Cohen & Cohen, 1993; Wellman & Lagattuta, 2000). When children begin to develop a theory of mind (ToM) they develop awareness that human behaviour is governed by belief, knowledge, memory and imagination that conflict with overt reality. However, while the notion of theory

There are many myths out there about raising a bilingual child. If you and your partner have two different native languages, or if you and your partner are just fluent in more than one language, you should not let these myths hold you back from raising your child to be bilingual. A few of the major myths about raising a bilingual child are debunked below:

While some may think that this is not certain studies have proven otherwise. In The Power of a Bilingual Brain, Jeffery Kluger states that, “Research is increasingly showing that the brains of people who know two or more languages….. Multilingual people, studies show, are better at reasoning, at multitasking, at grasping and reconciling conflicting ideas.”(1) Clearly, a bilingual education places students a step ahead not only in their education careers but, as well as in their daily life’s outside school. Jeffery Kluger discusses how a bilingual brain is not necessarily smarter brain, but is a more flexible and practical brain. Evidently, demonstrating to us one of the many benefits of a bilingual

I think the main idea of the reading is that everyone does have an accent even though you don’t think you have an accent when you speak to others around you. The person you speak with will think you have an accent but you, yourself don’t think so. John Esling stated in the reading that there is two different types of accents, one is the ‘foreign’ accent where someone speaks a language using the sound of another language, for example someone has trouble on pronouncing some of the sounds of a second language that they are trying to learn. The other accent is the way of a group of people speaking their own native language. Like a foreigner you met, their accent can determined where they live and what social groups that they might belong to. For example, you grow up to share the way of speaking or accent with the community you grow up with, which will be

In the beginning I talked about wanting to understand how when newborns develop their cognitive learning development of two different languages as they got older for example attending a bilingual Preschool, would they be able to continue with their development of learning both English and Spanish and be able to grow and become experienced in both languages and be able to transition from their first language they may use at home and their second language they may use at school. Now that we got to take a look at two studies that wanted to know if children from low income families either attending a bilingual preschool or a stay at home, are able to grow in both English and Spanish language. In those two studies they had many things in common

TOM stands for ‘theory of mind’. Two-language infant’s better ability to inhibit action shines here as well. In a task where they would have to inhibit their announcement of the correct answer (in regard to the location of a piece of chocolate), they can successfully do so, thus attributing the location of the chocolate to someone else’s previous exposure, not the infant's current exposure. The infants show more understanding of different possible options of a person/situation, which could be instilled from mistakes and learning routines from multiple language

The fact that the tested children grouped the actions in accordance with the grammatical structure of their respective language is evidence for linguistic relativity, as “both groups of children construe(d) the relations between objects in the world on the basis of their language specific categories, and not on the basis of some universal, conceptual categories” (Dirven and Verspoor 1998:140-141). This suggests that the children from the two linguistic communities will partly see the world in a different way, being inclined to categorise the things they see in contrasting fashions.

This past week I conducted two false-belief tasks: the unexpected contents task and the Sally-Anne task, to the children of Rainbow and Rhymes. Theses task will help me observe the children if they have a Theory of Mind. Theory of Mind refers to whether or not children can understand that others have their intents and perspectives that are different from their intentions and perspective.

Many parents and teachers, now more than ever, are teaching children the importance of understanding and speaking more than one language. However, many children who speak more than one language have slight developmental delays in their syntax for both languages. However, the benefits of being bilingual far outweighs these very minor delays. There are many benefits to being bilingual. Recent studies done have even discovered that being bilingual may help protect our brains from developing diseases such as Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia. Those of us who learned a second language during childhood have a better understanding for how language is structured and used, this understanding is called metalinguistic insight.

The belief that theory of mind is established at 4 years of age was partially due to an experiment by Wimmer and Perner (1983) in which 3 year olds could not complete a false-belief task successfully, whilst 4 year olds could. The explanation for this, being that at approximately 4 years of age, young children go through a cognitive change (Goldman, 2012). False-belief tasks are believed to be an accurate measure for testing theory of mind, as to successfully complete the task, understanding of others representations of reality must take place. Not only this but false-belief tasks have been shown to have some cross-cultural (Wellman, Tardif & Sabbagh, 2008) and test-retest validity (Hughes, Adlam, Jackson, Taylor & Caspi, 2000). However, some argue that False-belief tasks are not only testing theory of mind, but are testing the child’s ability to communicate (Bloom & German, 2000). Consequently, as infants below the age of four are not as proficient in their language, false-belief tasks involving complex language demands, will be exceedingly more difficult for a 3-year-old, than it would for a 4-year-old child. Previously, non-verbal tasks have also been used to test theory of mind, Woodward (1998) used a goal-orientated tasks to test whether 9-month-old infants could understand intentions of other individuals. The results were

No matter where you are in the world, you are taught about language. Whether it’s in your home learning your language or in school trying to learn a foreign language. Although while learning language the notion is never really thought about or brought up that the language and way we speak can influence the way we think and interact. Phycologist and neuroscientist alike have spent years, with multiple different tests to see if there is a connection between the various languages that are spoken and the way people not only think but also how they go about their daily lives. She writes to not only her colleagues and neuroscientists but also to anyone in the general public that is genuinely interested in the connection between

Research by Lera Boroditsky (2001) posed many interesting questions regarding linguistic diversity and the resultant interplay between language and thought: whether linguistic diversity stimulates different ways of thinking, whether learning new languages changes the way one thinks, whether bilingual and multilingual people think differently when speaking different languages. Clark (2003) maintains that although language does not indicate a complete map of consciousness or thought, it is at least a “representational map” that varies across languages.

Researchers are continuously investigating methods of advancing human development. Many studies have explored the world of bilingualism and found a few surprising results. The skill of knowing two or more languages has been linked to a variety of cognitive benefits. Knowing more than one language has been proven to impact more than just the linguistic system of cognitive development. This essay will review the positive effects bilinguals experience through early and middle childhood along with adulthood. In addition, with a few of my personal believes and experiences.