Theory-of-Mind development in educational bilingualism: Identifying the strongest predictors of performance and tracking them over time
This longitudinal study monitored Theory-of-Mind development in monolingually raised but bilingually educated Spanish children (age 5–6) with varied L2-English curricula (13%–83%) to assess whether higher L2-exposure resulted in advantages on seven ToM concepts (emotion, desires, belief, reference,...
| Autores: | , , |
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| Tipo de recurso: | artículo |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2026 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia |
| Repositorio: | e-spacio (DSpace). Repositorio Institucional de la UNED |
| Idioma: | inglés |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:dnet:e-spacio(ds_::36c4a3d4c4a5c61cd0adeddf5eded32c |
| Acceso en línea: | https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14468/32218 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | 5505.10 Filología Theory of Mind educational bilingualism longitudinal cognitive affective conative |
| Sumario: | This longitudinal study monitored Theory-of-Mind development in monolingually raised but bilingually educated Spanish children (age 5–6) with varied L2-English curricula (13%–83%) to assess whether higher L2-exposure resulted in advantages on seven ToM concepts (emotion, desires, belief, reference, moral-reasoning, lies, sarcasm). Attention (selective, switching, inhibition) and a full suite of individual-difference effects were also monitored. GLMMs linked greater L2-exposure to higher ToM accuracy, and although all three attention measures contributed to ToM scores, the effect of selective attention was the strongest. L1-vocabulary and NVR routinely predicted ToM scores, and girls surpassed boys on sarcasm. We conclude that bilingualism spurs ToM development quickly and is not linked to L2-vocabulary at this stage. In addition, the fact that L2-exposure and individual differences impacted cognitive, affective, and conative ToM differentially supports an approach that analyses these components separately. |
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