Theory of Mind and Evidentiality Acquisition in Heritage Bilingual Aymara-Spanish Children in the North of Chile

Abstract

Abstract The present work examines the connection between language and conceptual development, investigating whether false-belief reasoning (FBR) and source-monitoring ability (SMA), abilities within the theory of mind (ToM) framework, trigger the comprehension of semantic and pragmatic knowledge (evidential scalar implicatures) encoded in the evidentiality structure (Papafragou et al., 2007). Furthermore, the present work examines whether age modulates the comprehension of ToM abilities, and whether age influences comprehension of grammar knowledge encoded in the target structure. Twenty-one bilingual Aymara-Spanish heritage children performed one FBR task and one SMA task. In addition, the same group and 15 bilingual Aymara-Spanish adults performed one semantic and one pragmatic Aymara evidentiality task. The results showed that age was relevant in developing ToM abilities and comprehending the target structure’s evidential semantic features. Furthermore, the results demonstrated that semantic features had a positive relationship with the acquisition of ToM abilities, as opposed to pragmatic knowledge. These outcomes suggest that the computation of Aymara evidential scalar implicatures is lexically driven as opposed to contextually driven.