Theory of Mind (Tom) Abilities Among Children With Developmental Language Disorder (Dld) and Children on the Autism Spectrum

Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), formerly known as Specific Language Impairment (SLI), is characterized by children who exhibit significant language impairments but, at the same time, have normal hearing, age-appropriate scores in non-verbal intelligence tests, and no clear developmental impairments related to neurological, sensory, intellectual, emotional, or environmental damage.

While children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) consistently show difficulties with Theory of Mind (TOM), there are conflicting views in the literature about whether children with DLD also have difficulties with TOM. The aim of this paper is to evaluate TOM abilities in children with developmental language difficulties. Another goal is to assess whether TOM abilities in children with DLD are similar to those of children with autism without accompanying language difficulties (ALN) and children with autism with accompanying language difficulties (ALI).

The study included 80 children aged between 5 years and 3 months to 6 years, comprising 20 children with ASD and language impairment, 20 children with ASD without language impairment, 20 children with DLD, and 20 typically developing children. The findings showed that children with DLD performed lower on the TOM Battery task compared to children from the other three groups. Children with DLD demonstrate significant difficulties in TOM tasks, even though they do not exhibit autistic traits. This suggests that language impairments delay their ability to understand and interpret the mental states of others and affect their TOM abilities.

The study is important in understanding the linguistic factors that influence TOM abilities, as opposed to the primary difficulties in TOM abilities characteristic of children on the autism spectrum.