Crosslinguistic Developmental Consistency in the Composition of Toddlers’ Internal State Vocabulary: Evidence from Four Languages

Mental state language, emerging in the second and third years of life in typically developing children, is one of the first signs of an explicit psychological understanding. While mental state vocabulary may serve a variety of conversational functions in discourse and thus might not always indicate psychological comprehension, there is evidence for genuine references to mental states (desires, knowledge, beliefs, and emotions) early in development across languages. This present study presents parental questionnaire data on the composition of 297 toddler-aged (30-to 32-month-olds) children’s internal state vocabulary in four languages: Italian, German, English, and French. The results demonstrated that across languages expressions for physiological states (e.g., hungry and tired) were among the most varied, while children’s vocabulary for cognitive entities (e.g., know and think) proved to be least varied. Further, consistent with studies on children’s comprehension of these concepts, across languages children’s mastery of volition terms (e.g., like to do and want) preceded their mastery of cognition terms. These findings confirm the cross-linguistic consistency of children’s emerging expression of abstract psychological concepts.

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Relations between maternal mental state language and joint attention of typically-developing infants and infants with down syndrome

PsycEXTRA Dataset ◽

10.1037/e579192013-293 ◽

2012 ◽

Author(s):

M. Legerstee ◽

G. Markova ◽

B. Small

Keyword(s):

Down Syndrome ◽

Joint Attention ◽

Mental State ◽

Typically Developing ◽

Mental State Language ◽

State Language

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Maternal mental state language is associated with trajectories of Chinese immigrant children’s emotion situation knowledge

International Journal of Behavioral Development ◽

10.1177/0165025418783271 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 43 (1) ◽

pp. 43-52 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Stacey N. Doan ◽

Helen Y. Lee ◽

Qi Wang

Keyword(s):

Mental State ◽

Cultural Context ◽

Mental States ◽

European American ◽

Chinese Immigrant ◽

Children's Emotion ◽

Mental State Language ◽

And Behaviors ◽

Over Time ◽

State Language

We investigated the role of mothers’ references to mental states and behaviors and children’s emotion situation knowledge (ESK) in a prospective, cross-cultural context. European American mothers ( n = 71) and Chinese immigrant mothers ( n = 60) and their children participated in the study. Maternal references to mental states and behaviors were assessed at Time 1 when children were three years of age. ESK was assessed when children were 3, 3.5, and 4.5 years of age. Multi-group latent growth curve analyses were used to model children’s growth in ESK over time, as well as relations between mental state language and references to behaviors on children’s trajectories. Results indicated that maternal references to mental states were associated with concurrent levels of ESK for European American children, and change over time for the Chinese immigrant children. Maternal references to behaviors were negatively associated with concurrent ESK for both groups.

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Mental terms in mothers' and children's speech: similarities and relationships

Journal of Child Language ◽

10.1017/s0305000900011594 ◽

1992 ◽

Vol 19 (3) ◽

pp. 617-631 ◽

Cited By ~ 62

Author(s):

David Furrow ◽

Chris Moore ◽

Jane Davidge ◽

Lorraine Chiasson

Keyword(s):

Theory Of Mind ◽

Mental State ◽

Mental States ◽

Mental Processes ◽

Mental State Language ◽

Mother And Child ◽

Children's Attention ◽

Children's Speech ◽

State Language

ABSTRACTIn this study, mental terms in mothers' and their children's speech at two and three years of age were studied in order to examine the relationships between maternal and child use. Nineteen mother and child dyads were videotaped for one hour on each of two days when the children were 2;0 and again for two one-hour sessions on separate days when they were 3;0, and mental terms were noted. The utterances in which mental terms were used were coded for function. Results supported the existing picture of children's mental term use. Few terms appeared at 2;0, but many were used at 3;0 with think and know predominating. Mental terms occurred more commonly in utterances used to regulate the interaction between the participants than in utterances referring to mental states. Children's mental term use mirrored that of their mothers. Further, mothers' use of mental terms for particular functions when their children were 2;0 predicted their children's use at 3;0. While allowing no conclusions about causation, our findings suggest that the development of mental state language, and thus presumably a theory of mind, is fostered by the linguistic environment. Specifically, it is argued that the tendency of mothers to focus their children's attention on mental processes by talking about them and, more importantly, by using utterance types which conceivably direct the children to reflect on their own mental states, is associated with children's use of mental terms.

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Parental Mentalizing During a Pandemic: Use of Mental-State Language on Parenting Social Media Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Clinical Psychological Science ◽

10.1177/21677026211062612 ◽

2022 ◽

pp. 216770262110626

Author(s):

Tal Yatziv ◽

Almog Simchon ◽

Nicholas Manco ◽

Michael Gilead ◽

Helena J. V. Rutherford

Keyword(s):

Social Media ◽

Mental State ◽

Text Analysis ◽

Matched Control ◽

Mental States ◽

Social Media Data ◽

Mental State Language ◽

Time Periods ◽

Media Data ◽

State Language

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a demanding caregiving context for parents, particularly during lockdowns. In this study, we examined parental mentalization, parents’ proclivity to consider their own and their child’s mental states, during the pandemic, as manifested in mental-state language (MSL) on parenting social media. Parenting-related posts on Reddit from two time periods in the pandemic in 2020, March to April (lockdown) and July to August (postlockdown), were compared with time-matched control periods in 2019. MSL and self–other references were measured using text-analysis methods. Parental mentalization content decreased during the pandemic: Posts referred less to mental activities and to other people during the COVID-19 pandemic and showed decreased affective MSL, cognitive MSL, and self-references specifically during lockdown. Father-specific subreddits exhibited strongest declines in mentalization content, whereas mother-specific subreddits exhibited smaller changes. Implications on understanding associations between caregiving contexts and parental mentalization, gender differences, and the value of using social-media data to study parenting and mentalizing are discussed.

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Theory of mind in naturalistic conversations between autistic and typically developing children and adolescents

10.31234/osf.io/7j2un ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Diana Alkire ◽

Kathryn A. McNaughton ◽

Heather Yarger ◽

Deena Shariq ◽

Elizabeth Redcay

Keyword(s):

Theory Of Mind ◽

Social Interactions ◽

Rating Scale ◽

Mental States ◽

Typically Developing ◽

Typically Developing Children ◽

Crucial Component ◽

Mental State Language ◽

Strengths And Difficulties ◽

And Gender

Successful social interactions are assumed to depend on theory of mind (ToM)—the ability to represent others’ mental states—yet most studies of the relation between ToM and social-interactive success rely on non-interactive tasks that do not adequately capture the spontaneous engagement of ToM, a crucial component of everyday social interactions. We addressed this gap by establishing a novel observational rating scale to measure the spontaneous use of ToM (or lack thereof) within naturalistic conversations (conversational ToM, or cToM). In 50 age- and gender-matched dyads of autistic and typically developing children aged 8–16, we assessed cToM during 5-minute, unstructured conversations. We found that ratings on the cToM Negative scale, reflecting ToM-related violations of conversational norms, were negatively associated with two forms of non-interactive ToM: visual-affective and spontaneous. In contrast, the cToM Positive scale, reflecting explicit mental state language and perspective-taking, was not associated with these non-interactive ToM abilities. Furthermore, autistic participants were rated higher than typically developing participants on cToM Negative, but the two groups were rated similarly on cToM Positive. Together, these findings provide insight into multiple aspects of ToM in conversation and reveal a nuanced picture of the relative strengths and difficulties among autistic individuals.

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