Dahlgren SvenOlof, Almén Helena, Dahlgren Sandberg Annika
a Department of Psychology , University of Gothenburg , Gothenburg , Sweden.
J Genet Psychol. 2017 Sep-Oct;178(5):303-307. doi: 10.1080/00221325.2017.1361376.
Few studies have explored the relationship between theory of mind (ToM), executive function (EF), and bilingualism at the same time. In this study 14 young bilingual children were compared with monolingual children on a test battery composed of 5 ToM tests, 5 EF tests, and 1 test of general language ability. The result showed that despite significantly lower verbal ability, the bilingual children outperformed the monolingual ones on tests of EF. There were no differences in ToM performance. The authors argue that there is a strong relationship between bilingualism and EF, but, contrary to results from earlier studies, they could not find any relationship between bilingualism and ToM. EF did not predict ToM performance. Lack of a significant relationship could be due to the children's young age and consequently their low scores on the ToM tasks.
很少有研究同时探讨心理理论（ToM）、执行功能（EF）和双语能力之间的关系。在本研究中，14名年轻的双语儿童与单语儿童在一组测试中进行了比较，该测试组包括5项心理理论测试、5项执行功能测试和1项一般语言能力测试。结果显示，尽管双语儿童的语言能力明显较低，但他们在执行功能测试中的表现优于单语儿童。心理理论表现方面没有差异。作者认为，双语能力与执行功能之间存在密切关系，但与早期研究结果相反，他们没有发现双语能力与心理理论之间存在任何关系。执行功能并不能预测心理理论表现。缺乏显著关系可能是由于儿童年龄较小，因此他们在心理理论任务中的得分较低。
