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

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.

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

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.

Mothers’ Use of Regulatory Talk with Toddlers in Chile and the US: How Do Cultural Values and Children’s Gender Affect Mothers’ Regulatory Talk at 12 and 30 Months?

Studies have shown that Chilean and US infants differ in their levels of self-regulation. One of the mechanisms of early socializing is the use of language, particularly mental state language. The current study seeks to deepen our knowledge of the ways in which mental state language is related to socialization processes in early childhood, including the ways both culture and children’s gender influence a mothers’ use of mental state talk. We used a quantitative and descriptive approach with 109 mothers and their children (64 Chilean and 45 US dyads), measured twice, at 12 and 30 months old. Mental state references related to regulation were coded during a story-sharing task, including positive (calm and patient) and negative (messy and impatient) references to regulating behavior. Chilean mothers generally showed more regulatory references than US mothers, especially if the children were at a younger age (12 month). Frequencies of regulatory references increased in US mothers at 30 months but were still less than in Chilean mothers. At the 12-month measuring point, Chilean mothers showed more negative regulatory attributes than positive regulatory attributes. Finally, US mothers mainly used references to secondary emotions (e.g., pride) and positive regulatory attributes (being obedient, mature and patient) at both ages.

Mental State Language Use in Children with Down Syndrome and the Role of Caregivers

Children with Down syndrome (DS) have both strengths and difficulties in speech, language, and social communication. Mental state language—the ability to discuss others' perspectives such as their thoughts, feelings, and intentions—represents a foundational social communicative skill that is delayed in many children with DS, even into the school-age years. The purpose of this article is to review the evidence base on mental state language development in school-age children with DS, focusing in particular on assessment and intervention. We discuss assessment procedures that are both age appropriate and developmentally appropriate for this population. We also present preliminary data highlighting the role of caregivers in supporting mental state language development in school-age children with DS through shared storytelling. We propose that interventions aimed at supporting mental state language development in DS should include a focus on caregiver–child shared storybook reading, even in the school-age years. Therefore, we discuss key considerations for clinicians when teaching caregivers strategies for supporting mental state language and social communication in children with DS.

Early linguistic reference to first and second person depends on social understanding as well as language skills: Evidence from Czech 30-month-olds

The early use of first and second person pronouns has been viewed as a sign of emerging social understanding. However, it may also depend on general language development: pronouns do not appear among the first words children acquire. In addition, some languages conjugate verbs for person, and the inflections may thus show similar relations to social understanding and language as pronouns. Very few studies have examined the relations between early person reference on the one hand and both social understanding and language development on the other. The present study used data on spontaneous language transcripts and language tasks from 58 Czech-speaking children aged 30 months to examine the relations between person reference, social understanding, and general language development. Social understanding was estimated from children’s use of the mental state language (MSL). The results confirm that both MSL and general language development show unique relations to person reference with pronouns as well as verbs.

“What was his name, again?”: A new method for reducing memory-based errors in an adult false-belief task

Despite considerable interest in the development of Theory of Mind (ToM) during early childhood, until recently, there has been little consideration about whether and how ToM skills continue to change into adulthood. Furthermore, the false-belief task, which is believed to capture the underlying mechanisms of ToM, is rarely used in studies of ToM with adults; those tasks that do assess false-belief understanding may be confounded by incidental task demands, such as complex narratives and excessive memory requirements, making it difficult to isolate adults’ true ToM skills, much less to compare them with the skills of children. Here, we adapted a task developed by Valle, Massaro, Castelli, and Marchetti (2015, https://doi.org/10.5964/ejop.v11i1.829) to assess false-belief understanding in adults. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions. In the reading condition, participants read a story about the unexpected transfer of a ball between three brothers. In the video condition, participants watched a video version of the same story. Finally, in the training condition, participants were first trained on the names of the characters, before watching the video. Although condition did not affect participants’ ability to correctly answer a standard false belief question (“Where does X think Y thinks the ball is?”), participants in the training condition used more mental state language to justify their responses (“Why does X think Y thinks the ball is here?”), and this improved performance was mediated by improved memory for the story details. We conclude that at least some “failures” of ToM use may be due to an inability to understand, recall, or communicate complex information in a ToM task, raising important questions about how best to measure ToM in adults (and children) in the future.