Abstract
In this case report, we studied Theory of Mind (ToM) and figurative language comprehension in a 7.2-year-old child, conventionally named RJ, with isolated and complete agenesis of the corpus callosum (ACC), a rare malformation due to the absence of the corpus callosum, the major tract connecting the two brain hemispheres. To study ToM, which is the capability to infer the other’s mental states, we used the classical false belief tasks, and to study figurative language, i.e., those linguistic usages involving non-literal meanings, we used tasks assessing metaphor and idiom comprehension. RJ’s intellectual level and his phonological, lexical, and grammatical abilities were all adequate. In both the ToM false belief tasks and novel sensory metaphor comprehension, RJ showed a delay of 3 years and a significant gap compared to a typically developing control group, while in idioms, his performance was at the border of average. These outcomes suggest that RJ has a specific pragmatic difficulty in all tasks where he must interpret the other’s communicative intention, as in ToM tasks and novel sensory metaphor comprehension. The outcomes also open up interesting insights into the relationships between ToM and figurative language in children with isolated and complete ACC.
Highlights
The corpus callosum is the largest bundle of fibers connecting the cerebral hemispheres
Performances were deficitary in the A part of Theory of Mind (ToM) in the NEPSY II and all the false belief tasks (Pinelli and Santelli, 2005; Vio and De Meo, 2014)
We studied ToM and figurative language comprehension in a 7.2-year-old child, RJ, with isolated and complete AC, two challenging abilities in this condition
Summary
The corpus callosum is the largest bundle of fibers connecting the cerebral hemispheres. The agenesis of the corpus callosum (ACC) is a rare malformation that occurs in 1:4,000 live births in which the approximately 200 million axons of the corpus callosum (Glass et al, 2008) are either absent or fail to migrate toward the opposite hemisphere (Bedeschi et al, 2006; Lund et al, 2016). In the social interaction area (Badaruddin et al, 2007), particular difficulties have been found in identifying others’ mental states, which constitutes the core of the construct of the Theory of Mind (ToM) (Premack and Woodruff, 1978) These difficulties in the social area stimulated the researchers to compare the symptomatology of individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD, ) with that of individuals with ACC, and in some cases, an overlapping between the characteristics of the two conditions was found (Booth et al, 2011; Paul et al, 2014). To account for the characteristics of that subgroup, the authors thought that those individuals had a different developmental trajectory, with a delayed onset of autistic social symptoms and an early onset of restricted, repetitive, and stereotyped behaviors
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