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.

中文翻译：

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另类观点：双语儿童信念推理与模糊形象感知的关系

心理表征理论——能够表征他人的心理状态并理解这些信念可能与自己和现实不同的能力——与其他元表征能力一起出现在儿童早期，例如理解可以通过多种方式感知图像. 有限的研究表明，心理理论和图像元表示的个体差异是相关的——指向域一般元表示——但这些联系可能是由于相关的能力，如抑制控制。为了评估这种可能性，本研究在双语儿童（4.5-8.5 岁）的低收入样本中检查了信念推理和模糊形象感知之间的关系，因为双语与元表征技能和执行功能有关。