Falkman Kerstin W, Hjelmquist Erland
Department of Psychology, Göteborg University, Box 500, SE-405 30 Göteborg, Sweden.
J Deaf Stud Deaf Educ. 2006 Fall;11(4):410-20. doi: 10.1093/deafed/enl002. Epub 2006 Jun 8.
A group of non-native, early signing deaf children between the ages of 7 and 11 years were tested on a referential communication task. A group of hearing children matched for sex and mental and chronological age were also included in the study. The aim was to study the deaf children's ability to take another persons perspective in a task that resembled a real-life communicative situation to a higher extent than the standard theory of mind (ToM) tasks. A further aim was to investigate the possible importance of a number of background variables such as mental and chronological age, working memory, and false-belief attribution. Results show that the hearing children outperformed the deaf children on the referential communication task and that results were highly correlated with both chronological and mental age, as well as with working memory. There was a positive, but not significant, correlation between false belief and success on the referential communication task. This is an indication that the two tasks tap different abilities and that false belief might be necessary, but not sufficient in order to be skilled in the art of referential communication. The possible role of working memory in the referential communication task is also discussed. The results support the hypothesis of the importance of early talk about mental states for the later development of ToM abilities.
对一组年龄在7至11岁之间、非母语、早期就开始使用手语的聋儿进行了一项指称性交流任务测试。研究中还纳入了一组在性别、心理年龄和实际年龄方面相匹配的听力正常儿童。目的是研究聋儿在一项比标准心理理论（ToM）任务更类似于现实生活交流情境的任务中，从他人角度思考的能力。另一个目的是调查一些背景变量的可能重要性，如心理年龄和实际年龄、工作记忆以及错误信念归因。结果显示，在指称性交流任务中，听力正常儿童的表现优于聋儿，且结果与实际年龄、心理年龄以及工作记忆高度相关。错误信念与指称性交流任务的成功之间存在正相关，但不显著。这表明这两项任务考察的是不同的能力，并且错误信念对于熟练掌握指称性交流技能可能是必要的，但并不充分。文中还讨论了工作记忆在指称性交流任务中的可能作用。研究结果支持了早期谈论心理状态对ToM能力后期发展具有重要性的假设。
