Links Between Theory of Mind and Internalizing and Externalizing Behaviors in School-Age Latinx Children

• In Event: Theory of Mind and Mental Health in Childhood and Adolescence: Towards a transdiagnostic approach.

Abstract

Theory of mind (ToM) is an important social-cognitive ability that involves understanding one’s own and others’ mental states. Although studied extensively among young children, research examining links between ToM and social behavioral outcomes in school-age children has received less attention and findings to date are mixed. For example, higher social anxiety has been linked to both elevated and reduced ToM (e.g., Nikolic et al., 2019) and ToM has been connected to both prosocial and aggressive behaviors (e.g., Weimer et al., 2021). Additionally, much research on ToM and mental health has been conducted in relatively affluent and predominately White contexts. There remain important questions about the extent to which ToM, particularly as measured using conventional assays, is related to mental health in other populations.

The current study included 110 Latinx school-age children (Mage=10.64y, Range=8-12y, SD=.59y) who resided in a U.S.-Mexico border community. Approximately half were female (n=59, 53.6%) and 64.5% (n=71) were Spanish/English bilinguals. Over half of families reported an annual household income below $20,000 (51.2%). Mothers’ average education fell between high school and vocational school, while fathers’ average education was between grade school and high school.

Spanish and English language proficiency were measured via the picture vocabulary subtest of the Woodcock-Munoz Language Survey–Revised (WMLS-R; Woodcock et al., 2005). ToM was assessed using the Strange Stories task (Happé, 1994), which was administered in the child’s dominant language, classified using WMLS-R scores (n=65 English and n=45 Spanish). Parents and teachers completed the Behavior Problems Index (Peterson & Zill, 1986) to assess adolescents’ internalizing and externalizing problem behaviors in the past three months. Parents also completed an acculturation measure (Cuellar et al., 1995).

After controlling for age, gender, and verbal ability, significant negative correlations between children’s ToM and parental reports of both externalizing and internalizing symptomatology were found, but only among English-dominant children (Table 1), patterns which were driven by anxious-depressive symptoms and antisocial behaviors. Given low internal consistency in the Strange Stories in both languages (Cronbach’s alpha=.51 in English and .57 in Spanish), item-level relations also were examined. The stronger correlates of problem behaviors in English-dominant children were their ability to understand sarcasm, persuasion, and forgetting, but none of these items showed relations with behavior in Spanish-dominant children. Relations between ToM and teacher reports of problem behaviors were not significant for either group.

Although English-dominant children scored slightly higher on ToM, this difference disappeared after correcting for language proficiency in tested language, which related to ToM in both groups. Of interest, the English-dominant group had higher levels of parental acculturation and family income, but these factors did not seem to fully explain the linguistic specificity of the links between ToM and problem behaviors. Results from the current study suggest that although some links between ToM and mental health might replicate in more diverse samples, these effects can be fragile and highly dependent on the testing context. Future work should continue to focus on designing cross-culturally valid measures and determining which mechanisms influence connections between social cognition and mental health.

Authors

• Amy A Weimer, Texas State University
  Presenting Author

• Katherine Rice Warnell, Texas State University