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Introduction: Traumatic brain injury (TBI) negatively impacts social communication in part due to social cognitive difficulties, which may include reduced mental state term (MST) use in some discourse genres. As social cognitive difficulties can negatively impact relationships, employment, and meaningful everyday activities, assessing and treating these difficulties post-TBI is crucial. To address knowledge gaps, the present study examined MST use in the narrative retells of adults with and without severe TBI to compare between-group performance, evaluate changes over the first two years post-TBI, and investigate the impact of participant and injury-related variables. Methods: The total number of MSTs, ratio of MSTs to total utterances, and diversity of MSTs were identified in the Cinderella narratives of 57 participants with no brain injury and 57 with TBI at 3, 6, 9, 12, and 24-months post-TBI. Results: Reduced MST use in participants with TBI was found at 3, 6, 9, and 12-months post-TBI, but these reductions disappeared when story length (total utterances) was accounted for. Further, MST diversity did not differ between groups. Similarly, although the total number of MSTs increased over time post-TBI, no changes were observed in the ratio of MSTs to total utterances or MST diversity over time. Injury severity (post-traumatic amnesia duration), years of education, and verbal reasoning abilities were all related to MST use. Discussion: Overall, although individuals used fewer MSTs in complex story retells across the first year following severe TBI, this reduction reflected impoverished story content, rather than the use of a lower ratio of MSTs. Further, key prognostic factors related to MST use included injury severity, educational attainment, and verbal reasoning ability. These findings have important implications for social communication assessment and treatment targeting social cognition post-TBI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study investigates whether exposure to multilingual pedagogies enhances emergent bilingual children's narrative abilities. These abilities are among the most reliable indicators of children's literacy skills. We compare two groups of emergent bilingual children with migrant background attending the fourth and fifth grade of a public primary school in Italy: 30 children were exposed to multilingual pedagogies, whereas 33 attended a 'traditional' monoglossic program. The results show that children exposed to multilingual pedagogies use more mental state terms in their narratives in both their home language and Italian than children exposed to monoglossic education. Furthermore children exposed to multilingual pedagogies exhibit similar patterns of use of mental state terms across the two languages. By contrast, the production of mental state terms differs across the two languages among the children exposed to monoglossic education. The qualitative analysis of the narratives shows that the home and the school language dynamically interact with each other regarding the construction of the narrative among the children exposed to multilingual pedagogies. The children attending monoglossic programs rely mostly on literal translations. The study shows that multilingual pedagogies boost emergent bilinguals' literacy skills and enable them to access these skills from all languages in their repertoire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

IntroductionTraumatic brain injury (TBI) negatively impacts social communication in part due to social cognitive difficulties, which may include reduced mental state term (MST) use in some discourse genres. As social cognitive difficulties can negatively impact relationships, employment, and meaningful everyday activities, assessing and treating these difficulties post-TBI is crucial. To address knowledge gaps, the present study examined MST use in the narrative retells of adults with and without severe TBI to compare between-group performance, evaluate changes over the first two years post-TBI, and investigate the impact of participant and injury-related variables.MethodsThe total number of MSTs, ratio of MSTs to total utterances, and diversity of MSTs were identified in the Cinderella narratives of 57 participants with no brain injury and 57 with TBI at 3, 6, 9, 12, and 24-months post-TBI.ResultsReduced MST use in participants with TBI was found at 3, 6, 9, and 12-months post-TBI, but these reductions disappeared when story length (total utterances) was accounted for. Further, MST diversity did not differ between groups. Similarly, although the total number of MSTs increased over time post-TBI, no changes were observed in the ratio of MSTs to total utterances or MST diversity over time. Injury severity (post-traumatic amnesia duration), years of education, and verbal reasoning abilities were all related to MST use.DiscussionOverall, although individuals used fewer MSTs in complex story retells across the first year following severe TBI, this reduction reflected impoverished story content, rather than the use of a lower ratio of MSTs. Further, key prognostic factors related to MST use included injury severity, educational attainment, and verbal reasoning ability. These findings have important implications for social communication assessment and treatment targeting social cognition post-TBI.

This study examined the relationship between mental state term use in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and typically developing (TD) children engaged in play. Expression of mental state terms was used as an indicator of theory of mind (ToM) skills. Archived data were used to compare mental state term use for five ASD-TD dyads engaged in various play contexts. During imaginative play, children with ASD used fewer cognition mental state terms than TD children but used a similar number of emotion mental state terms. In combination play, both groups used similar numbers of cognition and emotion mental state terms. Play context implicates use of mental state terms in expression in children with ASD. Scaffolding use of mental state terms during play may provide an opportunity for children to use more advanced levels of ToM, including cognitive mental state term expression, when engaged with peers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Many language domains suggested to be relevant to ToM development are considered. • A large longitudinal sample of non-English speaking children is assessed. • Study employs a novel, purer, task of sentential complementation understanding. • Earlier sentence comprehension, general and mental vocabulary predict later ToM. • Earlier ToM predicts later general and mental vocabulary. Research on the relationship between language acquisition and Theory of Mind (ToM) has been largely confined to English-speaking populations and has yielded conflicting results regarding which domains of language are most relevant. The current study assessed 101 Dutch -speaking kindergartners on ToM and various potentially relevant domains of language (general and mental vocabulary, sentence comprehension and sentential complementation understanding). Results show a bidirectional relationship between ToM and both vocabulary measures and a unidirectional relationship from sentence comprehension to ToM. Sentence comprehension was the best ToM predictor out of the language measures. No evidence was found for a relationship between ToM and sentential complementation understanding, likely due to the use of a novel, and potentially purer, sentential complementation measure. Comprehension of language at the sentential level is thus fundamental for explicit ToM development. Finding this result in a Dutch-speaking population suggests that similar outcomes from previous studies can be generalised more broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses social constructivist perspective on the development of the use of the verb hope. Topics include relations between children's use of mental state language and social cognitive development; justifying social constructivism and critique theory-theory; and problem the child faces in learning about the mind.

The production of specific mental state terms types and functions by caregivers and their TD children and caregivers and their children with ASD were assessed in two contexts: a parent's story-telling task and a child's story-telling task. Caregivers of children with ASD produced less causal talk and proportionally less desire and cognitive talk than did caregivers of TD children. When focusing only on variation in our ASD sample, caregivers' and children's production of different mental state references varied with context and were predicted by different child characteristics (i.e., theory of mind, autism severity, language level). We conclude that caregivers are likely adjusting different aspects of mental state input depending on different aspects of child development although these adjustments may not always be optimal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Cognition terms occured with age without the highly dependent used word "know". • Gender didn't influence the use of Chinese children's mental state terms. • Socioeconomic status didn't nfluence the use of Chinese children's mental state terms. • Contexts influenced the use of Chinese children's mental state terms. • Age influenced the use of Chinese children's negative disposition terms. • Mental state term usage of mother-child pair closely linked. Chinese children's mental state terms were studied in a sample of 79 Chinese mother–child pairs (with children aged 3–6 years). Children's mental state term categories were calculated according to age, gender, and context as well as socioeconomic status (SES) variations. The study found that there were no significant age or gender differences in the Chinese children's mental state terms use during the 3- to 6-year stage and that the Chinese children's perception, disposition, and cognition terms were highly dependent on the use of particular words: "see" "like" and "know". After removing the highly dependent word "know," children's cognition terms showed significant age differences. Further research on disposition terms showed that with age negative terms displayed an increasing trend. In addition, the use of Chinese children's mental state terms was closely related to specific contexts. For example, references to volition occurred most often in the context of drawing, whereas references to cognition occurred when playing with blocks. Meanwhile, disposition terms were maintained at a minimum frequency in all contexts, although the picture book used in the reading context was embedded with many disposition cues. Moreover, there was no significant difference in the mental state terms of children aged 3 to 6 years with high and low SES. Furthermore, in addition to perception terms, mothers' mental state terms were significantly and positively related to children's mental state terms of the same type. These findings provide evidence for the developmental pattern of mentalization development and appropriate education for Chinese children aged 3 to 6 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates narratives of Finnish children with specific language impairment (SLI) from linguistic and pragmatic perspectives, in order to get a comprehensive overview of these children's narrative abilities. Nineteen children with SLI (mean age 6;1 years) and 19 typically developing age-matched children participated in the study. Their picture-elicited narrations were analysed for linguistic productivity and complexity, grammatical and referential accuracy, event content, the use of mental state expressions and narrative comprehension. Children with SLI showed difficulties in every aspect of narration in comparison to their peers. Only one measure of productivity, the number of communication units, did not reach statistical significance. Not only was linguistic structure fragile but also pragmatic aspects of storytelling (referencing, event content, mental state expressions and inferencing) were demanding for children with SLI. Results suggest that pragmatic aspects of narration should be taken into account more often when assessing narrative abilities of children with SLI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mental state terms and personal narratives are conversational devices used to communicate subjective experience in conversation. Pre-adolescents with high-functioning autism (HFA, n = 20) were compared with language-matched typically-developing peers (TYP, n = 17) on production of mental state terms (i.e., perception, physiology, desire, emotion, cognition) and personal narratives (sequenced retelling of life events) during short conversations. HFA and TYP participants did not differ in global use of mental state terms, nor did they exhibit reduced production of cognitive terms in particular. Participants with HFA produced significantly fewer personal narratives. They also produced a smaller proportion of their mental state terms during personal narratives. These findings underscore the importance of assessing and developing qualitative aspects of conversation in highly verbal individuals with autism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Narrative assessment is sensitive to the communication impairments of children with specific language impairment and those with autistic spectrum disorders. Although both groups of children tend to show deficits in narrative, it is unclear whether these deficits are qualitatively different and how language and pragmatic ability may impact on narrative competence. Comparing these two groups of children with children who exhibit pragmatic language impairment without autism may help to clarify these issues. Aims: This study explored the relationship between structural language ability and pragmatic competence in narrative in children with communication impairments and typically developing children. Methods and Procedures: Diagnostic status was determined using the Children's Communication Checklist. All children were asked to generate a narrative to the wordless picture book Frog, Where are You? (Mayer 1969). Narratives were analysed according to their global structure, local linguistic structure and the child's ability to provide evaluative comments, especially about mental or emotional states. Outcomes and Results: No group differences were seen in global structure or evaluation. Children with specific language impairment and autistic disorder made more syntactic errors, and children with autism were significantly more likely to provide ambiguous references in the story. No significant relationships were evident between the Children's Communication Checklist and narrative measures. The complexity of language used was related to evaluation in the clinical groups. Conclusions: Narrative is a good way of assessing linguistic ability in older children with communication impairments. Core language abilities rather than pragmatic skill or diagnostic status are likely to influence narrative development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]