Theory of Mind (ToM) in two languages: A multiple case study of bilingual English-Hebrew-speaking children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)

The study is an ongoing project which aims to investigate Theory of Mind (ToM) skills among bilingual children with ASD who acquire English as their Heritage language and Hebrew as their Societal language. There is a scarcity of research on bilingual children with ASD (but see Meir & Novogrodsky (2019a, b) on Russian-Hebrew bilinguals with ASD). Previous research consistently demonstrates that ToM impairment is a core deficit in children with ASD (Baron-Cohen, Leslie, & Frith, 1985). Yet, little is known about ToM skills in bilingual children with ASD. The effect of language (Heritage versus Societal) was examined in relationship to the children's performance on ToM tasks. Five English-Hebrew-speaking children with ASD (6-10-year-old) were tested on ToM tasks (verbal and non-verbal). Verbal ToM battery included 5 subtasks: Diverse Desires, Diverse Beliefs, Content False-Belief, first-order location False-Belief, second-order False-Belief). The nonverbal ToM was evaluated using a picture-sequencing task (Baron-Cohen et al., 1986) which includes stories manipulating causal-mechanical, descriptive-behavioral, and psychological-intentional conditions. In addition, children`s language skills were assessed using LITMUS Sentence Repetition tasks (Marinis & Armon-Lotem, 2015). All children were tested in English and in Hebrew. The language of the first session was counter-balanced. First, ToM scores varied depending on the language of administration. More specifically, scores on verbal ToM tended to be higher in English, the Heritage language. Second, a variation in scores was observed for verbal and non-verbal performance on ToM tasks. Correlations between morpho-syntactical skills and scores on verbal ToM tests were detected. The preliminary results of the study demonstrate the importance of assessing bilingual children with ASD in both of their languages. These findings have important implications for the language of treatment of bilingual children with ASD as well as recommendations for parents of bilingual children with ASD.