Korai kétnyelvuség és tudatelmélet: A kétnyelvuség elonyei a versengo mentális reprezentációk kezelésében

According to the main view of social cognition, children become able to reason about mental representations only after the age of four. However, other researchers have argued that such theory of mind abilities are innate, and that the observed differences are due to other processes (e.g., executive functions] involved in solving theory-of-mind problems. The present work investigated these assumptions through studies performed with bilingual children. According to the results, pro-cessing different languages enhances the development of executive functions already at 7 months of age, before the onset of speech. Furthermore, their more developed executive functions allow bilingual preschoolers to perform better on theory-of-mind tasks, where well-developed executive functions are necessary, as children have to resolve a conflict between two mental representations. Crib bilingualism results in changes that go beyond the domain of language and seems to enhance soclo-cognitive development.