Abstract:

Adolescence is a period in which emotions and social relations become increasingly important. Throughout this period, theory of mind (ToM), the ability to understand mental states, is essential to an individual’s social and academic success. Deaf adolescents (DA) have been observed having difficulties with the comprehension of mental states. Recent studies have shown a possible link between reading comprehension and theory of mind, but these findings are unclear DA with cochlear implants. The purpose of this study is to explore the relation between ToM and reading comprehension in DA with cochlear implant. Two tests sessions were performed on two groups of adolescents between 12 and 14 years old: 10 DA implanted before 4 years of age and the other group formed by 16 typical hearing development. The evaluation was focused in reading comprehension and theory of mind (affective and cognitive). Reading comprehension was assessed by PROLEC-SE-R (Catalan version) and affective and cognitive theory of mind was assessed by faux pass test and a false belief-task, respectively. Results indicated that DA scores in affective ToM was lower than their peers, while cognitive ToM saw no significant difference. In addition, DA performance in reading tasks was not as good as their classmates. Correlation analysis showed that implausible responses in cognitive ToM was negatively related with poor reading performance among deaf individuals. Furthermore, reading comprehension with inferential questions was associated with cognitive ToM. Other subtests of reading however, had no relation with mentalistic tasks. In conclusion, the capacity for understanding mental states in DA is still a challenge in adolescence and could be involved in text comprehension.

Keywords:

Deaf, reading comprehension, theory of mind, adolescence.