Alternative Perspectives: Relations Between Belief Reasoning And Ambiguous Figure Perception In Bilingual Children

Representational theory of mind-the ability to represent others' mental states and understand that these beliefs can be different from one's own and reality-emerges in early childhood alongside other meta-representational abilities, such as understanding that an image can be perceived in multiple ways. Limited research has suggested that individual differences in theory of mind and pictorial meta-representation are correlated-pointing to domain-general meta-representation-but these links might be due to associated abilities such as inhibitory control. To assess this possibility, the present study examines the relationship between belief reasoning and ambiguous figure perception in a low-income sample of bilingual children (aged 4.5-8.5 years), as bilingualism has been linked to meta-representational skills and executive function. Partialing out age and inhibitory control, belief reasoning and ambiguous figure perception were significantly correlated, suggesting that performance on these tasks involves a general meta-representational capacity apart from common executive function demands.