Effect of Mental State Discussion on Theory of Mind in Students Who Are Deaf
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
Psychology and Special Education
Date of Award
Fall 2011
Abstract
The author examined the effect of a story-reading program using mental state discussion on the performance of young students who were deaf on a false belief (FB) theory of mind (ToM) task. Twenty-six students were selected to participate; all were enrolled in a specialized school in the metropolitan northwest United States using Signing Exact English (SEE-II) as the language of instruction. All students received the training program in a switching replications design. As hypothesized, these sessions resulted in an increase in passing rate on a measure of FB reasoning. As similar ToM studies done with students with normal hearing, this study suggests that students who are deaf can also benefit from training programs using mental state discussion. Also, the results suggest the specific impact such training can have on students who are deaf of a critical age--between 4- and 6-years-old--when students who are hearing typically pass measures of FB reasoning and students who are deaf typically fail such measures. The impact of vocabulary competence was also apparent. Participants with higher receptive vocabulary scores were more likely to pass the FB measure. Also, those with the lowest scores received the most significant gain from the training program.
Advisor
Steven Ball
Subject Categories
Education | Educational Psychology
Recommended Citation
Keddington, Holly B., "Effect of Mental State Discussion on Theory of Mind in Students Who Are Deaf" (2011). Electronic Theses & Dissertations. 59.
https://digitalcommons.tamuc.edu/etd/59
