The Role Of Inhibitory Control In Moderate Mental Retarded Children's Understanding Of ToM

Since the eighties of the 20th century, Theory of Mind (ToM) has become an area of much concern among developmental psychologists. As the research in this domain going deeper, the focus has changed gradually: from emphasizing on the different characteristics at different ages in children' s theory-of-mind development to the relations between ToM and many potential relevant factors. Recently, a growing number of researchers have proposed that gains made in executive function (EF) abilities, with inhibitory control(IC) as its core, significantly contribute to ToM performance. Many experiments with normal children as objects support this hypothesis. However, in the field of special education, there is few research neither on the characteristics of ToM nor on the correlation between ToM and IC, especially on mental retarded (MR) children.This research attempts to examine the relation between theory-of-mind and inhibitory control of moderate MR children range in 10 to 18 years old. It will help us further understand the link between theory-of-mind and inhibitory control ability of MR children from a developmental perspective, and provide us a theoretical guide on how to improve moderate MR children' s theory-of-mind from a new aspect.The major findings of this research are as follows:Firstly, the moderate MR children' s ToM showed an obvious development during 13 to over 16 years old, which comparing with the normal children was sharply delayed. However, the performances of the moderate MR children on different ToM tasks were not in balance. In the same age group, the moderate MR children always fulfilled the task of wish understanding best, followed by emotion understanding and they got the lowest score on the task of false-belief understanding, the tendency of which was similar to that of normal children.Secondly, the moderate MR children' s IC ability also developed with the age, but still sharply delayed when comparing with normal children. However, in the same age group, the performances of the moderate MR children on different IC tasks were not in balance yet.Thirdly, the moderate MR children' s ToM ability and IC ability were...