A Review of the Relationship between Language Ability and Theory of Mind in Children with Specific Language Disorders / 听力学及言语疾病杂志

ABSTRACT

Children with specific language impairment(SLI)have normal cognitive abilities but experience language deficits.The heterogeneity of language disorders makes SLI children optimal subjects for investigating the correlation between language ability and theory of mind.This paper provides a comprehensive review of foreign em-pirical studies examining the relationship between language ability and theory of mind in SLI groups from various perspectives.The findings indicate that specific types of language disorders exhibit delayed development in theory of mind,which is closely associated with their language ability deficits.Among all linguistic elements,syntactic de-fects demonstrate the most concentrated evidence regarding their impact on theory of mind.It is noteworthy that al-though SLI children offer valuable insights into the correlation between language and theory of mind,further investi-gation is still required to comprehensively comprehend this association.The present study also provides recommenda-tions for future research endeavors in this domain.