A PSYCHOLINGUISTIC STUDY OF THE “THEORY OF MIND” OFTURKISH BILINGUAL CHILDREN

Abstract

This article presentsthe results of a study with Turkish preschool bilingual children living in Berlin, Germany. This article aims to examine the influence between the level of proficiency in the mother tongue (first language L1) and the official language (second language L2) on the one hand and the “theory of mind” on the other, or more precisely, how the lexical knowledge of L1 and L2 and the understanding of interrogative sentences used with a verb indicating mental states helps to understand the ToM.Research methods and techniques. The study included 18 Turkish-German bilingual children attending a kindergarten in Berlin, Germany. The children were divided into two age groups: 1 g of 4–5 year-olds (8 children) and 2 gr. of 5-6 year-olds (10 children) and were tested in their native Turkish and then in German. The testing was performed in the kindergarten in a separate room, where only the experimenter and the examined child were present. The children are offered the classical tests for “theory of mind”, as well as language tests related to the comprehension of interrogative sentences, containing a verb showing a mental state and comprehension and production of vocabulary in native Turkish and German as a second language for them.The resultsshow that vocabulary is not an important factor, and mastery of interrogative sentences is the factor that helps to understand the “theory of mind”. The results obtained were analyzed statistically by means ofthe t-test.Children with German-Turkish bilingualism understand the vocabulary of their mother tongue well and it is obviously in their passive vocabulary, but this knowledge has not yet passed into their active vocabulary. German vocabulary predominates in the children's active vocabulary. With regard to the level of mastery of interrogative sentences, children are equally good at interrogative sentences in both languages.