Adult bilinguals outperform monolinguals in theory of mind

Abstract

Theory of mind (ToM) is an essential ability for social competence and communication, and it is necessary for understanding behaviors that differ from our own (Premack and Woodruff, 1978). Research on bilingual children has reported that 3 and 4-year-old bilinguals outperform monolinguals in ToM tasks. While research on ToM has traditionally focused on children’s performance, adult bilinguals’ ToM abilities are largely unexplored. Research suggests that adult bilinguals also might outperform monolinguals (Rubio-Fernandez and Glucksberg, 2012), nevertheless, this difference has yet to be established using a more robust methodology. Here, we tested bilingual and monolingual adults on the director task (Dumontheil, Apperly, & Blakemore, 2010). Results showed that bilingual adults outperformed monolinguals in response to perspective-dependent trials of the director task, but not in response to control trials. This suggests that bilingualism is associated with individuals’ ability to take into account the perspective of another person. In addition, the number of cultures that participants were exposed to, regardless of bilingualism, was also associated with ToM performance. Overall, the findings suggest that linguistic and cultural experience have an impact on ToM.

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