Xia Rowena J, Haas Brian W
Department of Psychology, Concordia College, Moorhead, MN 56562, USA.
Department of Psychology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602, USA.
Behav Sci (Basel). 2025 Jun 13;15(6):815. doi: 10.3390/bs15060815.
Previous research on the relationship of bilingualism and theory of mind has largely focused on children. However, several recent studies of the theory of mind have found differences in theory of mind processing among older populations, namely adults. Given that language has been found to play an important role in the successful theory of the mind task performance of adults, it is valuable to understand the relationship of the language ability of bilingualism and theory of mind in adults. The specific focus is on studies comparing monolinguals and bilinguals in a theory of mind assessment for an adult sample. In this systematic review, we reviewed and analyzed these studies and conducted a meta-analysis. Among the studies included for meta-analysis (k = 7), we found a significant small-to-medium effect size ( = 0.429, < 0.0001), indicating a bilingual advantage among adults. A variety of different measures for theory of mind were included in these studies. More studies are required to better understand the relationship between multiple language processing and social cognition among adults to better understand this gap in the literature.
先前关于双语能力与心理理论关系的研究主要集中在儿童身上。然而，最近几项关于心理理论的研究发现，老年人群（即成年人）在心理理论加工方面存在差异。鉴于语言已被发现对成年人成功完成心理理论任务起着重要作用，了解双语能力与成年人心理理论之间的关系很有价值。具体关注点在于针对成年样本在心理理论评估中比较单语者和双语者的研究。在这项系统综述中，我们对这些研究进行了回顾和分析，并进行了荟萃分析。在纳入荟萃分析的研究中（k = 7），我们发现了显著的中小效应量（ = 0.429， < 0.0001），表明成年人中存在双语优势。这些研究纳入了多种不同的心理理论测量方法。需要更多研究来更好地理解成年人的多语言加工与社会认知之间的关系，以填补文献中的这一空白。
