The Influence Of Individual Differences In Theory Of Mind On Idiom Comprehension Of Foreign Students

Studies have shown that there is a two-way promotion between theory of mind and language comprehension,especially in child development.This paper takes the understanding of different types of idioms,such as single person,interactive and physical,as the breakthrough point,and explores the relationship between the understanding of Chinese idioms,a special language point,and their own psychological theories of Chinese native speakers and international students.In study 1,an idiom paraphrase judgment task test was developed,and an online remote idiom comprehension test was conducted for native Chinese speakers and foreign students,and the differences in comprehension of different types of idioms between the two groups were examined.The results show that,in general,the correct rate of idiom comprehension of native speakers is significantly better than that of international students,and the response time to idiom interpretation judgment is also significantly faster than that of international students.There is the same pattern in the comprehension of the three types of idioms,that is,among the three types of idiom comprehension,the response time for single-human idiom comprehension is the longest but the correct rate is also the best,the interaction type is second,and the physical idiom comprehension response time is the fastest but the correct rate is also lowest.In study 2,participants’ theory of mind ability was further tested by eye-reading task,and the relationship between individual differences in theory of mind and correct comprehension rate of different types of idioms was explored.The results show that there is a significant positive correlation between the correct rates of the three idioms,and there is a significant positive correlation between the score of theory of mind and the correct rate of single human idioms,that is,the higher the score of theory of mind,the higher the accuracy rate of single human idioms.According to the results of the present study,four suggestions are put forward for idiom teaching:Teachers should pay attention to the individual differences of learners,pay attention to the gradual and personalized teaching content;Learners should pay attention to the different content characteristics of idioms and study idioms according to interpersonal and physical situations.Pay attention to the layout of idioms teaching materials,give full consideration to the social cognitive preference of learners,appropriately increase the proportion of interpersonal idioms;Make full use of idiom picture books to enhance children’s interactive learning of Chinese idioms.