The Relation between Children's and Mothers’ Mental State Language and Theory‐of‐Mind Understanding

Abstract

This study investigated the relation between mothers' utterances and theory of mind in a longitudinal study involving three time points over 1 year. Mothers were asked to describe some pictures to 82 children at all three time points. Mothers' use of mental state utterances in these descriptions at early time points was consistently correlated with later theory-of-mind understanding. This was true even when a number of potential mediators were accounted for, including children's own use of mental state language, their earlier theory-of-mind understanding, their language ability, their age, mothers' education, and other types of mother utterances. Mothers' mental state utterances seemed genuinely causal because early theory-of-mind ability was not related to later mother mental state utterances (i.e., it was not a reciprocal relation). Results also showed that children's desire talk preceded their talk about beliefs.

How do use and comprehension of mental-state language relate to theory of mind in middle childhood?

“…Longitudinal and cross-sectional studies have shown that the more a mother uses mental-state terms when speaking to her child, the better the child's understanding of false belief Symons, Fossum, & Collins, 2006) and of emotion (Taumoepeau & Ruffman, 2008;Wang, Doan, & Song, 2010) and the more frequently the child itself makes use of psychological lexicon (Howard, Mayeux, & Naigles, 2008;Scholnick & Hall, 1991). Other research with preschool children has indicated an association between the frequency with which they use mental-state terms during spontaneous conversation and their scores on false-belief ToM tasks (Brown, Donelan-McCall, & Dunn, 1996;Hughes, Lecce, & Wilson, 2007;Ornaghi & Grazzani Gavazzi, 2009;Ruffman et al, 2002;Symons, 2004).…”

“…One of the aspects investigated is the correlation between maternal mental language and ToM development (Dunn, Brown, & Beardsall, 1991;Ruffman, Slade & Crowe, 2002). Longitudinal and cross-sectional studies have shown that the more a mother uses mental-state terms when speaking to her child, the better the child's understanding of false belief Symons, Fossum, & Collins, 2006) and of emotion (Taumoepeau & Ruffman, 2008;Wang, Doan, & Song, 2010) and the more frequently the child itself makes use of psychological lexicon (Howard, Mayeux, & Naigles, 2008;Scholnick & Hall, 1991).…”

Constructing an understanding of mind: The development of children's social understanding within social interaction

“…In longitudinal studies, forms of family talk about mental states have been found to be related to later success on false belief tests (e.g., Brown et al 1996;Dunn et al 1991a;Ruffman et al 2002). In addition, mothers who think of their children in mentalistic terms ("mindmindedness"), and therefore, presumably talk to their children about the psychological world, have children who are more advanced in understanding beliefs than are other children (Meins & Fernyhough 1999;Meins et al 1998).…”

“…"Are you angry?" The social process suggested by C&L is clearly central to the development of such content knowledge (Jenkins et al 2003;Ruffman et al 2002).Prioritization of joint goals. Only if one cares enough about the internal experiences of others can the joint goal achieve prominence over one's own goals.…”

Establishing a Deictic Relational Repertoire in Young Children

“…Behavior analysts generally view perspective taking as a learned repertoire (Barnes-Holmes, McHugh, BarnesHolmes, & Barnes-Holmes, 2004). In a global sense, this idea is supported by the growing body of research showing that perspective-taking skills are influenced by environmental factors, such as the presence of siblings (e.g., Cassidy, Fineberg, Brown, & Perkins, 2005), family size (e.g., Jenkins & Astington, 1996), the relative age and gender of siblings (e.g., Ruffman, Perner, Naito, Parkin, & Clements, 1998), and the quality of sibling and maternal conversations about perspective taking (e.g., Foote & Homes-Lonergan, 2003;Peterson & Slaughter, 2003;Ruffman, Slade, & Crowe, 2002).…”