The Impact of Sign Language on the Cognitive Development of Deaf Children: The Case of Theories of Mind
The study zeroed on identifying the ability of deaf children to attribute to false beliefs; a principle referred to as the theory of mind. The research was phenomenal, with the researcher making every effort to give out credible results, an aspect that previous studies failed. In this study, the researcher concentrated on the whole results of the participants rather than using results of separated tasks. A child would only succeed to have a false belief on when such a participant answered correctly at least two sets of the three used tasks. The three tasks used in the study were “two unexpected change tasks one unexpected content task”. The author used the tasks to study the participants’ ability to attribute to false beliefs
The author built the study around two hypotheses. These are, “that linguistic features of sign language could promote the development of theories of mind and that early exposure to language would allow easier access to these theories”. Since the researcher divided the participants into two groups, that is, 155 deaf children and 39 hearing children, this increased the accuracy of the results. The researcher selected and assigned the deaf children depending on the extent of their deafness and age.
The results of this study left a mark in the study of the theory of mind. The findings of the study illustrated how deaf children drawn from deaf parents outclassed other participants on the three applied tasks. These findings were phenomenal in reaffirming previous studies that concluded how second-generation showed effective capabilities for tasks attributing false beliefs. Their performance was higher, though not a conclusive remark to write off the capabilities of hearing children. The study was insightful, and it expounded my understanding of the theory of mind in relation to deaf children.