Theory of Mind and Parental Mental-State Talk in Children with CIs.
Agnieszka Pluta, Magdalena Krysztofiak, Małgorzata Zgoda and 6 others
PMID 36951492WHAT IT FOUND
Parents of children with cochlear implants used more literal talk and similar amounts of mental-state talk compared to parents of hearing children.
More emotional talk predicted better theory of mind in the implant group, while more literal talk predicted worse.
Key findings
01Parents of children with cochlear implants used significantly more literal utterances during shared reading than parents of hearing children, despite similar total verbosity and reading time.
02In children with cochlear implants, parental emotional utterances were positively associated with theory of mind scores, whereas literal utterances were negatively associated with basic theory of mind.
03Children with cochlear implants scored lower than hearing peers on all theory of mind subscales, including early, basic, and advanced abilities.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study is cross-sectional, so it cannot prove that parental talk caused changes in the child's theory of mind. Theory of mind was assessed via parent report rather than direct testing of the child, which may introduce bias. The hearing children were recruited via social media ads, while CI children came from clinics, which may create selection differences. Parents of children with CIs had lower educational levels on average than parents of hearing children, which was not fully controlled for in all analyses.
Declared interests
The study was funded by the National Science Centre in Poland and the University of Warsaw. No commercial conflicts of interest were reported.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume that increasing mental-state talk will improve theory of mind in all children. These associations were only found in the group with cochlear implants; no such links were observed in children with typical hearing.