Assessing the construct validity of a theory of mind battery adapted to Tunisian school-aged children

Imène Soumaya Salhi; Céline Lancelot; Yousri Marzouki; Wided Souissi; Aya Nejiba Besbes; Didier Le Gall; Tarek Bellaj

doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2023.974174

Assessing the construct validity of a theory of mind battery adapted to Tunisian school-aged children

Front Psychiatry. 2023 Mar 9:14:974174. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2023.974174. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Imène Soumaya Salhi¹, Céline Lancelot², Yousri Marzouki³, Wided Souissi¹, Aya Nejiba Besbes¹, Didier Le Gall⁴, Tarek Bellaj³

Affiliations

¹ Tunis University, Department of Psychology, Faculty of Humanities at Tunis, Tunis, Tunisia.
² Laboratoire de Psychologie des Pays de la Loire (LPPL), Université d'Angers, Angers, France.
³ Psychology Program, Department of Social Sciences, College of Arts and Sciences, Qatar University, Doha, Qatar.
⁴ Laboratoire de Psychologie des Pays de la Loire (LPPL), Centre Hospitalier Universitaire (CHU) d'Angers, Université d'Angers, Angers, France.

Abstract

Background: Theory of mind (ToM) refers to the ability to understand others' states of mind, desires, emotions, beliefs, and intentions to predict the content of their mental representations. Two major dimensions within ToM have been studied. The first is the type of inferred mental state, which can be cognitive or affective. The second comprises the types of processes involved according to their degree of complexity (first- and second-order false belief and advanced ToM). ToM acquisition is fundamental-a key component in the development of everyday human social interactions. ToM deficits have been reported in various neurodevelopmental disorders through various tools assessing disparate facets of social cognition. Nevertheless, Tunisian practitioners and researchers lack a linguistically and culturally appropriate psychometric tool for ToM assessment among school-aged children.

Objective: To assess the construct validity of a translated and adapted French ToM Battery for Arabic-speaking Tunisian school-aged children.

Methods: The focal ToM Battery was designed with neuropsychological and neurodevelopmental theory and composed of 10 subtests distributed evenly in three parts: Pre-conceptual, cognitive, and affective ToM. Translated and adapted to the Tunisian sociocultural context, this ToM battery was individually administered to 179 neurotypical Tunisian children (90 girls and 89 boys) aged 7-12 years.

Results: After controlling for the age effect, construct validity was empirically confirmed on two dimensions (cognitive and affective) via structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis, demonstrating that this solution has a good fit. The results confirmed that the age affected differentially the performance obtained on ToM tasks based on the two components of the battery.

Conclusion: Our findings confirm that the Tunisian version of the ToM Battery has robust construct validity for the assessment of cognitive and affective ToM in Tunisian school-aged children; hence, it could be adopted in clinical and research settings.

Keywords: construct validity; psychological assessment; school-aged children; test adaptation; theory of mind.

Grants and funding

Open Access funding provided by Qatar National Library.