La importancia de la Teoría de la Mente en la comprensión oral y comprensión lectora en estudiantes bilingües emergentes

heory of Mind (ToM), as a relevant aspect in children’s socio-cognitive development, has been widely studied. Some results have suggested that bilingual children have an advantage over their monolingual peers in development of ToM. However, there is less research regarding the predictive role of ToM in performance of oral and reading comprehension in elementary school students. This study evaluated a sample of 84 emergent bilingual, Spanish-speaking, third to fifth graders to identify the predictive role of ToM in their oral comprehension and reading comprehension in English, their second language, controlling by grade, vocabulary, and word identification. ToM was assessed using a test of other people’s intentions, beliefs, and perspectives along with recognition of emotions through facial expressions. For comprehension, standardized measures of oral and reading comprehension were used. The bivariate correlations and hierarchical linear regression analyses between ToM and each of the types of comprehension indicated a prediction of ToM in both types of comprehension when controlling statistically for grade, word identification, and vocabulary. This highlights the role of ToM in oral language and reading variables in emergent bilingual students and emphasizes its importance for teaching of reading for this population.