Theory Of Mind And Executive Function In Children With Intellectual Disability

Theory of Mind refers to the ability to understand the mental states (such as need,belief,intention, and sensation) of themselves and others,and to predict behavior based on those states. As the research in this topic going depper, the facus has changed gradually. In the beginning, much of the empirical work has concentrated on the ascertainment of age. However, attention is turning to the question of individual differences and the relations between ToM and many potential relevant factors. One factor believed to be particularly important is executive function(EF). EF serve to monitor and control thought and action and include skills such as inhibition, working memory and set shifting. The research about the relationship between theory of mind and executive function are very popular in recent years. There are clear correlations between ToM and EF in young normally developing and autism children, but there is no accordant conclusion until now. however, in the field of special education, there is few research neither on age characteristic nor the correlation between ToM and EF, especially on children with Intellectual disability.This research attempts to explore the relationship between ToM and EF in Intellectual disability children, and it will help us understand their development of ToM and EF. The training study provides us a theoretical guide on how to improve Intellectual disability of children's ToM.This study involved seven tasks:"WISC","unexpected location task","unexpected content task","appearance-reality task","DCCS task","the day-night task",and "hand game task", the development of "ToM" and "EF" of31mental disability children during9to over16years old is investigated. Children with Intellectual disability who had theory of mind deficits are involved in training study of false belief.The major findings of this research are as follows:First, the ToM of children with Intellectual disability put up a growing trend with age growth, the development of their ToM is sharply delayed. The quickly stage of development may be from12to16. The key time of children with Intellectual disability may be about16years old,they can finish basic ToM development. Second, children with Intellectual disability have good EF skills after9years. There are no significant differences among9-12years,13-15years and greater than16years in various EF tasks.Third,the children with Intellectual disability's ToM ability and EF ability were not intimately related over time. The same testee simultaneously has the deficits of ToM and good EF skills.The result supports the theory of domain-specific.Last, after training on false belief ability, children with Intellectual disability's score higher obviously on ToM tasks., the scores increase significantly from13to15years,which proved that the period may be fastly development stage.