A Psycholinguistic Study of the Theory of Mind in Turkish Bilingual Children

Authors:

Pages: 155-161
DOI: https://doi.org/10.54664/PNPE9302

Abstract:

This article presents the results of a study of bilingual Turkish preschool children living in Berlin, Germany. The study was conducted among two groups of children between 4 and 6 years of age (18 in total) in kindergarten with the aim of examining the extent to which the mother tongue (L1) and the second language (L2) are a factor in understanding the theory of mind. The children were offered the classical tests for the theory of mind, as well as language tests related to the comprehension of interrogative sentences, containing a verb that shows a mental state, and to the comprehension and production of vocabulary in native Turkish and German as a second language for them. The results show that vocabulary is not an important factor, and that the mastery of interrogative sentences is a factor that helps understand the theory of mind. The results obtained were analyzed statistically with the t-test.

Keywords:

theory of mind; Turkish language; bilingualism; psycholinguistics.

Download

NA