Bilingual Children's Understanding of the Mental State of the Other Person in the Context of the Theory of Mind

Background. How the bilingual children understand the false belief of other people is a relevantly new topic in the field of the developmental psychology. This question is very important one, because from it depends how early the bilingual children develop the «theory of mind». The literature shows controversial evidences regarding the age of bilingual children when exactly the start to develop the theory of mind. It seems it depends on the languages the children speak, their culture and the communication with the members of the families. Why is the development of understanding of false belief tasks in bilingual children so important? It is not important for specialists in developmental psychology only; the relevant research data will be useful for educators as well. Children who develop an understanding of other people's mental states are much better prepared for the process of mastering literacy in the primary grades.

Objectives of the paper is to examine the relation between the theory of mind and the development of some grammatical categories in the mother tongue and the second language of bilingual children.

Methods. The article analyzes the results of a study of 120 children from Bulgarian minority backgrounds. Among them were 60 children from Romani-Bulgarian families and 60 from families of Turkish-Bulgarian origin between the ages of 3 and 5. Classical tests were conducted, including two using non-verbal tests, a test with qualifying questions using the verb «to say» to express subjective attitudes, and an evidentiality test in both the native language (Turkish and Romani) and the second language (Bulgarian). Children with Turkish background live in a small town and Roma children live in a village. My hypothesis is that knowledge of certain grammatical categories can contribute to the development of the theory of mind (mental state) in children, and the place of residence influences this process.

Results. The data showed that Roma children did better on some tasks than children from Turkish families but were inferior on others. It was also found that the knowledge of grammatical categories does not affect the comprehension of the tasks of the theory of mind tests. The place of residence was also not related to the development of theory of mind of bilingual children belonging to national minorities.

Conclusion. The study led to the conclusion that in several cultures where oral traditions play an important role in the cognitive and language development of children, such as the Roma, classical tests to assess mental states are not sufficiently effective. In such cases, it would be more adequate to use tasks specifically adapted to cultural peculiarities.

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