Interrelationships between Theory of Mind and Language Skills in Children with Cerebral Palsy: A Review of the Literature

Theory of Mind (ToM) is an essential component of communicationwith the others and social understanding. Cognitive structures, such as language,working memory, and executive functions play a special role in understandingthe others҆ minds. Thus, given importance of the role of language skills indevelopment of ToM and the previous research findings regarding the restrictedcapacity of children with cerebral palsy (CP) in development of their ability tounderstand others’ thoughts and feelings, this review study was designed tomainly evaluate the influence of language on ToM in children with CP.

For this purpose, initially, electronic databases (PubMed, Scopus,PsycINFo, MEDLINE, Embase, and Web of Science) were searched fromSeptember 1 to 30 , during 2000-2020. Search was done focusing on the Englishwrittenpapers using a combination of keywords including: “Cerebral Palsy,Theory of Mind, Mentalization, and Language” to identify relevant studies from2000 to 2020.

A total of 978 publications were identified according to the initial searchcriteria. After reviewing abstracts, titles, and references of the identified papers,10 potentially relevant papers were selected. Based on assessing their full-text, 7papers completely met the inclusion criteria.

Given that children with CP have not been addressed by numerousinvestigations to date, there is limited information about their ToM skills andthe role of other different components of ToM development. Therefore, furtherresearch should be carried out to investigate this issue. The combined findingsof the reviewed papers showed that language skills had an effect on capacity toelaborate ToM competence in children with CP. This review study paves the pathto the future common research on children with CP and underlines importanceof using a methodology, in which ToM performance is studied in concert with adetailed investigation of speech and motor impairments.2021© The Authors. Published by JRSR. All rights reserved.