Abstract
Borderline intellectual functioning (BIF) is characterized by heterogeneous cognitive difficulties, with an intelligence quotient (IQ) between 70 and 85 points, and a failure to meet the developmental and sociocultural standards for personal independence and social responsibility required in daily life. The fact that this population still remain a marginal clinical category, with no ad hoc diagnostic and therapeutic approaches, has stimulated the present research. Our goal was to study children with BIF investigating the development of Theory of Mind (ToM) as a pillar of social competence. Children with BIF (N = 28, 16 male/12 female, and mean age 9.46 ± 1.26 years) and children with typical development (TD; N = 31, 17 male/14 female; mean age 8.94 years ± 0.99) underwent a neurocognitive assessment and a ToM assessment. Children with BIF showed a significant lower performance across all the levels of ToM development investigated compared to the control group, and a correlation between executive functions and the advanced levels of ToM reasoning. These results constitute a first step in the direction of defining the clinical profile of children with BIF concerning ToM development, opening the way to future interventions in order to support the developmental evolution of this population in an adaptive direction.
Highlights
Given the lack of data about Theory of Mind (ToM) in children with Borderline intellectual functioning (BIF) and their risk to develop social disadvantages with age, we have explored this construct in this population in comparison with children with typical development (TD)
Performance on the WISC-III was significantly different between the two groups as expected as the inclusion criteria were based on intelligence quotient (IQ) (Table 1)
The results of our study show that children with BIF have a deficit in ToM that is strictly connected with their executive functions and meta-representation competences
Summary
Borderline intellectual functioning (BIF) is a controversial nosographic entity and a marginal clinical category that remains to be clearly defined (Cornoldi et al, 2014) and for which targeted diagnostics and therapeutic approaches do not exist.Borderline intellectual functioning has been recently defined as a boundary status between disease and typical development, not stemming from a single neurodevelopmental syndrome and with heterogeneous functioning profiles (Salvador-Carulla et al, 2013). Children with BIF show a heterogeneous neuropsychological profile (Salvador-Carulla et al, 2013; Peltopuro et al, 2014) including difficulties in executive functions, i.e., working memory, problem solving, and attention (Alloway, 2010; Schuchardt et al, 2010) The concern with this condition lies in its impact on the quality of everyday life of the affected subjects (Ninivaggi, 2001; Karande et al, 2008; Fernell and Ek, 2010; Salvador-Carulla et al, 2013). A large part of these impairments, namely behavioral and affective disorders (Cook and Oliver, 2011; van Nieuwenhuijzen and Vriens, 2012), are an expression of a low social adaptive functioning and can be traced back to a lack of adequate complex socio-cognitive skills (Schalock et al, 2011)
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