Is Theory of Mind implicated in expressing epistemic causality?

Abstract

Objective: This thesis investigates whether Theory of Mind plays a role in expressing epistemic causality, as it was proposed by Zufferey (2010). Epistemic causality refers to a relation between e.g. two sentences in which an argument is provided for a statement that has previously been made; this means that epistemic causality shows the reasoning process that has lead to making a certain statement. This is investigated in two ways: testing whether bilingual children perform better than their monolingual peers and testing whether 4-year-olds perform better than 3-year-olds. Method: Several children had to answer twelve questions that stimulated them to argue using epistemic causality; for each question there were four different images they had to choose from in their answer. The performance of thirteen bilingual children (aged 4;0 - 4;11) was compared to that of fourteen monolingual children (aged 4;0 - 4;10). In addition, the performance of fourteen 3-year-old children (aged 2;11 - 3;11) was compared to that of fourteen 4-year-old children (aged 4;0 - 4;10). It was assessed whether certain groups produce arguments expressing epistemic causality more frequently. Results: There appeared to be a tendency for bilinguals to produce more arguments than the monolinguals. Also, variance appeared to be much larger in the group of bilinguals than in the group of monolinguals. However, no significant differences were found between the groups. Furthermore, there appeared to be a tendency for 4-year-old children to produce more arguments than 3-year old children, although none of these observed differences appeared to be significant. Conclusions: Even though none of the observed differences between the different groups appeared to be significant, at this point it is not yet necessary to conclude that Theory of Mind does not play a role in expressing epistemic causality. Also, it remains an open question whether there is a bilingual advantage for expressing epistemic causality. Further research will at least have to use a larger sample size in order to figure out this issue.