Mentalizing, a dynamic form of social cognition, is strengthened by language experience. Past research has found that bilingual children and adults outperform monolinguals on mentalizing tasks. However, bilingual experiences are multidimensional and diverse, and it is unclear how continuous individual differences in bilingual language experience relate to mentalizing. Here, we examine whether individual differences in bilingual language diversity, measured through language entropy, continuously pattern with mentalizing judgments among bilingual adults, and whether this relationship is constrained by first vs. second language reading. We tested sixty-one bilingual adults on a reading and inference task that compared mental state and logical inferences. We found that greater language diversity patterned with higher mentalizing judgments of mental state inferences across all readers, and that L2 readers attributed more mentalizing to logical inferences compared to L1 readers. Together, we found evidence of a positive relationship between continuous individual differences in bilingual language diversity and mentalizing.

中文翻译：

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双语心理状态：研究双语语言体验与心智化之间​​的持续关系

心理化是一种动态的社会认知形式，通过语言经验得到加强。过去的研究发现，双语儿童和成人在心智化任务上的表现优于单语者。然而，双语体验是多维和多样化的，目前尚不清楚双语体验中持续的个体差异与心智化有何关系。在这里，我们检查了双语语言多样性的个体差异（通过语言熵测量）是否在双语成年人中具有心理化判断的连续模式，以及这种关系是否受到第一语言和第二语言阅读的限制。我们在比较心理状态和逻辑推理的阅读和推理任务中测试了 61 名双语成人。我们发现，在所有读者中，更大的语言多样性与更高的心理状态推断有关，并且与 L1 读者相比，L2 读者将更多的心理化归因于逻辑推理。我们一起发现了双语语言多样性的持续个体差异与心智化之间​​存在正相关关系的证据。