The relation between parents' mental state talk and children's social understanding: A meta‐analysis

Abstract

Though there is empirical support for the relation between parents' mental state talk to children and children's social understanding, including false belief understanding (FBU) and emotion understanding (EU), effect sizes range widely. The current meta-analysis focused on the relation between parents' mental state talk and children's social understanding and moderators of this relation: parents' mental state talk content (e.g., cognitive vs. emotion talk), quality (e.g., appropriate vs. inappropriate), and context (e.g., book vs. reminiscing). Data from 22 studies examining FBU and 18 examining EU were examined. Participants included 2,298 children (<7 years). Analyses yielded a significant effect size for parents' mental state talk and children's FBU and EU. These relations were stronger under certain circumstances, particularly for children's FBU. For example, in terms of content, cognitive state talk was a stronger predictor of FBU and EU compared to talk about desires and emotions. For FBU, the strongest relations were present when parents' mental state talk was: (a) appropriate and explanatory compared to inappropriate and (b) in a book or selfreport context compared to reminiscing. The results of this study further refine the social constructivist view of social understanding and point to future avenues for research aimed at improving children's social understanding. K E Y W O R D S emotion, meta-analysis, parent-child communication, theory of mind 1 | I NTR OD U CTI ON Children's theory of mind (ToM)-the ability to understand one's own and others' mental states (e.g., desires, cognitions, and emotions) and how these mental states motivate behavior-is a critical social cognitive achievement. Over the past three decades research on this topic has resulted in a rich and extensive body of literature on the Social Development. 2018;27:223-246.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/sode

Maternal depression and children’s false belief understanding

“…Children’s FB scores were significantly positively related to overall maternal mental state talk ( r = 0.274, p = 0.030). Consistent with a recent meta‐analysis (Tompkins et al, ), the association between FB scores and maternal mental state talk was accounted for by the relations between FB scores and maternal use of knowledge terms ( r = 0.279, p = 0.027) and modulation of assertion terms ( r = 0.286, p = 0.023) in particular (remaining mental state categories p s > 0.371). As such, we created a mental state aggregate score by combining the standardized frequency scores for the knowledge and modulation of assertion categories.…”

“…Further, when mothers use knowledge terms (e.g., think, know, and their derivatives) they direct the child’s attention toward their own mental state (e.g., “Do you know who she is?”) as well as the mental state of others (e.g., “I think we should go outside”; “What is the little boy thinking?”; Ruffman et al, ). Consistent with theory, mothers’ tendency to make mind‐related comments in conversation correlates significantly positively with children’s false belief scores (Devine & Hughes, ; Peterson & Slaughter, ; Tompkins, Benigno, Kiger Lee, & Wright, ). Relatedly, there is evidence that parents’ tendencies to consider their children as mental agents (sometimes referred to as parents being “mind‐minded”) also has causal effects on ToM development (Meins et al, ).…”

Effects of Maternal Discourse Style and Content During Memory Talk on Preschoolers’ Prosocial Behavior: Mediating Effects of Preschoolers’ Moral Judgement

“…, . (Ruffman et al, 2006;Thompson & Winer, 2014) , (Ensor & Hughes, 2008;Tompkins, Benigno, Lee, & Wright, 2018) . (Taumoepeau & Ruffman, 2008), (Harris, 2005).…”

She Thinks in English, but She Wants in Mandarin: Differences in Singaporean Bilingual English-Mandarin Maternal Mental-state-talk

“…Parental mental-state-talk has been found to affect several aspects of a child's social development, including, but not limited to, socioemotional competence and theory of mind reasoning, even after controlling for age and language [6,7]. Despite its positive effects on children's social development, parental mental-state-talk has been primarily examined in monolingual Englishspeaking populations, and only a few studies have examined parental mental-state-talk in bilingual populations [8][9][10][11].…”

“…Free-play sessions were used over story-telling sessions for three reasons. First, a recent meta-analysis indicates that there are no differences in maternal mental state references between story-telling and naturalistic interactions [6]. Second, free-play is more likely to be a representative sample of mother and children's daily interactions compared to storytelling.…”