Parental mental-state talk and false belief understanding in Hong Kong children

Mothers' Mental State Talk and 3- to 5-Year-Old Children's Theory of Mind: Their Reciprocal Dynamic Impact

The development of children's social function is influenced by the social environment, and children also play an active role in shaping and nurturing this environment. The present study investigated the potential reciprocal dynamic impact of mothers' mental state talk (MST) and the development of theory of mind (ToM) in children. Using a cross-sectional design, we explored the development of ToM in 3- to 5-year-old children using an unexpected location task, an unexpected content task, an appearance-reality task, and mothers' MST during mother-child reading. The results showed the following: (1) the mothers' MST exhibited a shift from a predilection for subjective terms (such as desires) to a preference for objective terms (such as cognitions) as their children matured; (2) the development of the children's ToM was closely related to their mothers' MST. The overall MST scores, as well as the different categories and referents used in MST, were closely associated with the children's ToM development. Notably, at the age of four, a critical period emerged where the correlation between maternal MST and ToM became significantly pronounced. These findings highlight the reciprocal nature of mother-child interactions as a two-way adaptive process.

The longitudinal relations between mental state talk and theory of mind

BACKGROUND

Previous investigations of associations between children's Theory of Mind (ToM) and parents' use of words relating to mental states (or mental state talk; MST) have predominantly been performed using cross-sectional designs and false belief tasks as indicators of ToM.

METHODS

We here report a longitudinal study of 3-5 year-olds (n = 80) investigating ToM development using the ToM scale and three different parental MST types: the absolute frequency of words, the proportions of words, and the vocabulary size.

RESULTS

Our results revealed significant relations between all parental MST types and later child ToM. Proportions of parental MST were most often related to the children's ToM at 4 years of age. However, the rate at which the children developed ToM from 3 to 5 years of age was associated with the other two parental MST type measures, namely, absolute frequency and vocabulary size. Additionally, our analyses revealed that parents' use of cognitive MST words (e.g., think, or know) were most frequently associated with children's ToM at 4 years of age compared to emotion and desire-related MST words.

CONCLUSIONS

We conclude that the parental ability to capture the thoughts, beliefs, and knowledge present in different scenarios is associated with children's ability to understand other minds. Moreover, parents' way of talking about the mental states of others is associated with their children's ability to understand and further develop ToM.

Picture book reading improves children's learning understanding

Mental state reasoning is an integral part of children's teaching and learning understanding. This study investigated whether a picture book reading approach focusing on mental state discourse and contrasting perspectives in a preschool classroom setting would improve children's teaching and learning understanding and school readiness. In total, 104 children from four classrooms aged between 46 and 64 months (53 girls, M = 54.03 months, SD = 3.68) participated in the study. Half of the classrooms were randomly assigned to an experimental group where teachers read picture books rich in mental state discourse and engaged in intensive discussions with children for eight weeks. Children's false belief understanding and teaching and learning understanding were measured before and after the eight-week period. The result revealed that picture book reading improved children's learning understanding with a medium effect size, controlling for demographic variables, children's verbal ability, inhibition, and initial false belief understanding. The experimental group children further demonstrated more advanced school readiness 18 months after the intervention ended in a follow-up study using a teacher questionnaire.

Overlooked advantages of interactive book reading in early childhood? A systematic review and research agenda

Previous reviews of the nature and consequences of adult-child book reading have focused on seeking impacts of interactive reading on the acquisition of vocabulary and emergent literacy skills. In this systematic review we examined to what extent there has been systematic study of the effects of interactive reading on four less frequently studied developmental outcomes important to children's academic and life prospects: socio-emotional and socio-cognitive (SEL) skills, narrative skills, grammar, and world knowledge. We identified 67 studies of interactive reading that met the inclusion criteria and that examined the targeted outcomes, using either experimental, quasi-experimental, correlational, or single-group intervention methods. We found that studies of effects on grammar and world knowledge outcomes were very sparsely represented; though narrative was often studied as an outcome, the wide variation in conceptualizing and assessing the construct hampered any clear conclusion about book-reading effects. The most robust research strand focused on SEL skill outcomes, though here too the outcome assessments varied widely. We speculate that better instrumented approaches to assessing vocabulary and emergent literacy have led to the persistent emphasis on these domains, despite robust evidence of only modest associations, and argue that work to develop sound shared measures of narrative and SEL skills would enable cross-study comparison and the accumulation of findings. In addition, we note that the various studies implicated different explanatory principles for the value of reading with children: specific interactional features (open-ended questions, following the child's lead, expanding child utterances) or content features (emotion-enhanced books, talk about mental states, science topics), raising another topic for more focused study in the future.

Theory of Mind and Parental Mental-State Talk in Children with CIs

Previous studies have suggested that parents may support the development of theory of mind (ToM) in their child by talking about mental states (mental state talk; MST). However, MST has not been sufficiently explored in deaf children with cochlear implants (CIs). This study investigated ToM and availability of parental MST in deaf children with CIs (n = 39, Mage = 62.92, SD = 15.23) in comparison with their peers with typical hearing (TH; n = 52, Mage = 52.48, SD = 1.07). MST was measured during shared storybook reading. Parents' narratives were coded for cognitive, emotional, literal, and non-mental references. ToM was measured with a parental questionnaire. Children with CIs had lower ToM scores than their peers with TH, and their parents used more literal references during shared storybook reading. There were no significant differences in the frequencies of cognitive and emotional references between groups. Parental emotional references contributed positively to children's ToM scores when controlling for the child's age and receptive grammar only in the CI group. These results indicated some distinctive features in parents of deaf children with CIs' MST and highlighted the role of MST in the development of ToM abilities in this group.

Doll play prompts social thinking and social talking: Representations of internal state language in the brain

Doll play provides opportunities for children to practice social skills by creating imaginary worlds, taking others' perspectives, and talking about others' internal states. Previous research using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) found a region over the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) was more active during solo doll play than solo tablet play, implying that doll play might present opportunities for rehearsing theory of mind and empathy skills, even when playing alone. In this research, we addressed this more directly by investigating 4-8-year-old children's (N = 33) use of internal state language (ISL; i.e., references to emotions, desires, and cognitions) when playing with dolls and on tablets, both by themselves and with a social partner, and their associated brain activity in the pSTS using fNIRS. We found that children used more ISL about others when playing with dolls than when playing on tablets, particularly when they were playing alone. This mirrored the patterns seen in pSTS activity in previous research. When individual variability in ISL about others was considered, more ISL about others was linked to stronger pSTS activation. Thus, variability in pSTS activity during play is not about the perceptual or physical differences between toys (e.g., dolls are more human-like) but about what children think about when they engage in different kinds of play. This is the first research to investigate brain activity during spontaneously occurring ISL and indicates that children have a tendency to take and discuss others' perspectives during doll play, with implications for social processing in the brain. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://youtu.be/58HgxbuhBzU.