Development of a theory of mind assessment for children using multidimensional Rasch modelling.

Area of Science:

• Developmental Psychology
• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Child Psychiatry

Background:

• Existing Theory of Mind (ToM) assessments for children face developmental, dimensional, and practical limitations.
• Current measures often lack items across all ToM developmental levels (early, basic, advanced).
• Most assessments are unidimensional, failing to differentiate cognitive and affective ToM, and may rely heavily on verbal skills.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a comprehensive Theory of Mind Assessment (ToMA) for children.
• To address limitations in existing ToM measures regarding developmental scope, dimensionality, and practical application.
• To create a tool that is developmentally appropriate, multidimensional, and engaging.

Main Methods:

• Generation of assessment items based on classical scenarios covering all ToM developmental levels.
• Analysis of responses from 574 neurotypical children (37-194 months) using the multidimensional Rasch model.
• Classification of items into cognitive and affective domains, with item difficulties adjusted for sex bias.

Main Results:

• Ten items demonstrated satisfactory model fit, categorized into 4 cognitive and 6 affective domains.
• High Rasch person reliabilities (0.78 and 0.81) were achieved.
• Scores showed meaningful correlations with subjective and objective criteria, indicating validity.

Conclusions:

• The newly developed ToMA provides a reliable, valid, and sex-unbiased measure of children's Theory of Mind.
• The assessment satisfies developmental, multidimensional, and practical requirements, overcoming limitations of existing tools.
• ToMA shows promise for clinical and research applications, warranting further refinement and validation for high-quality ToM assessment.