de Villiers Jill
Departments of Psychology and Philosophy.
Lingua. 2007 Nov;117(11):1858-1878. doi: 10.1016/j.lingua.2006.11.006.
The proposal is made that the interface between language and theory of mind is bidirectional. It seems probable that the conceptual developments of early Theory of Mind form an essential basis for helping to fix at least word reference. In development from two to four years, no basis exists in research for conclusions about the direction of influence between language and Theory of Mind. At the stage of false belief reasoning, after age four, the role of the mastery of syntactic complementation is highlighted as a representational tool, that is, language development assists reasoning. The paper presents a brief summary of Theory of Mind, ranging from its earliest beginnings in infancy to the appreciation around age four years that others might hold false beliefs and act according to them. For each development, the parallel language developments are described, and questions are raised about the interface between the two. In particular, research that might determine the direction of influence from one to the other is discussed. More work is called for, especially with nonverbal tasks, good experimental linguistic work, and other special populations, that might allow a more precise delineation of how language and Theory of Mind interrelate at the interface.
有人提出语言与心理理论之间的界面是双向的。早期心理理论的概念发展似乎很可能构成了至少帮助确定单词指代的重要基础。在从两岁到四岁的发展过程中，研究中没有依据来得出关于语言和心理理论之间影响方向的结论。在四岁以后的错误信念推理阶段，句法补语掌握的作用作为一种表征工具被凸显出来，也就是说，语言发展有助于推理。本文简要概述了心理理论，从其在婴儿期的最初起源到大约四岁时认识到他人可能持有错误信念并据此行动。对于每个发展阶段，都描述了相应的语言发展情况，并对两者之间的界面提出了问题。特别是，讨论了可能确定两者之间影响方向的研究。需要开展更多工作，尤其是针对非语言任务、高质量的实验性语言学工作以及其他特殊人群的研究，这可能会更精确地描绘语言和心理理论在界面处是如何相互关联的。
