TY - JOUR
T1 - False belief understanding in children with specific language impairment
AU - Miller, Carol A.
N1 - Funding Information:
The research reported in this paper was supported by research grant number 5 R01 DC 00-458 from the National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, National Institutes of Health. I am very grateful to the research assistants and graduate students who helped to collect these data, and especially to Leila Rauf for her help in checking the videotapes. Thanks to Larry Leonard for helpful discussions and his comments on an earlier draft. Many, many thanks to the children who participated in this study and their families.
PY - 2001
Y1 - 2001
N2 - Children's understanding that people's beliefs may differ from reality is an important milestone in cognitive development. Yet the tasks usually used to assess this understanding rely on the comprehension of complex syntax. Children with specific language impairment (SLI) have language abilities that are below age expectations, but their nonlinguistic cognitive abilities - crucial to false belief understanding - are closer to age level. Four conditions of a standard false belief task were administered to 10 children with SLI, 10 children of the same age, and 9 younger children whose language comprehension ability was similar to the children with SLI. The four conditions varied as to their linguistic complexity. The SLI group performed similarly to same-age peers when linguistic complexity was low, but similarly to younger children when linguistic complexity was high. These findings provide evidence that linguistic competence serves as a limiting factor in false belief performance for children with SLI. Educational objectives: Readers will be able to (1) describe different hypotheses regarding the relationship between language and theory of mind development, (2) discuss how linguistic complexity impacts false belief performance for children with SLI, and (3) apply the language/theory of mind relationship when planning intervention.
AB - Children's understanding that people's beliefs may differ from reality is an important milestone in cognitive development. Yet the tasks usually used to assess this understanding rely on the comprehension of complex syntax. Children with specific language impairment (SLI) have language abilities that are below age expectations, but their nonlinguistic cognitive abilities - crucial to false belief understanding - are closer to age level. Four conditions of a standard false belief task were administered to 10 children with SLI, 10 children of the same age, and 9 younger children whose language comprehension ability was similar to the children with SLI. The four conditions varied as to their linguistic complexity. The SLI group performed similarly to same-age peers when linguistic complexity was low, but similarly to younger children when linguistic complexity was high. These findings provide evidence that linguistic competence serves as a limiting factor in false belief performance for children with SLI. Educational objectives: Readers will be able to (1) describe different hypotheses regarding the relationship between language and theory of mind development, (2) discuss how linguistic complexity impacts false belief performance for children with SLI, and (3) apply the language/theory of mind relationship when planning intervention.
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U2 - 10.1016/S0021-9924(00)00042-3
DO - 10.1016/S0021-9924(00)00042-3
M3 - Article
C2 - 11322571
AN - SCOPUS:0035108559
SN - 0021-9924
VL - 34
SP - 73
EP - 86
JO - Journal of Communication Disorders
JF - Journal of Communication Disorders
IS - 1-2
ER -