From Russian monolingualism to Kazakh bilingualism: narratives and theory of mind

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ABSTRACT The research report describes the ability of Kazakh preschool children to tell narratives relating to mental states, and the connection with theory of mind tasks about false beliefs. Three groups of preschool children (N = 29; 3-, 4-, and 5- year-olds) from the city of Almaty were tested in the Kazakh language. The results show very high correlations between understanding false belief tasks and producing effective narratives, even when age is controlled. According to Astington (1998) successful performance on false belief tasks and the ability to tell oral stories shows that the preschool children are becoming prepared for literacy in the Kazakh language as their mother tongue.