Social Cognition Development Pattern of Persian and Persian-Turkish Speaking Preschoolers Based on Theory of Mind Tasks Sequences

There is strong evidence in support of close relationship between language and theory of mind development in children. Wellman and Liu (2004) have provided a scale of the developmental progression of the mental states understanding in preschoolers. In this scaling, a sequence of seven tasks is presented that seems to emerge in a predictable order in this process. In other words, this set of tasks focuses on various conceptual constructs supposed to be sequentially evident in this cognitive process. 30 Persian speaking and 30 Persian-Turkish speaking children were tested on seven tasks of the theory of mind to provide a sequential pattern of these tasks based on their level of difficulty, on the one hand, and to compare these patterns with each other and also with that of Wellman and Liu proposed for preschoolers, on the other. Determined social development pattern indicated that the sequence of the theory of mind tasks for Persian speaking and Persian-Turkish speaking children almost is the same. Based on the results, the difference between monolingual and bilingual groups mean scores wasn’t significant in this study; none of the lingual groups was better than the other on performing theory of mind tasks.