Poster #192 - Associations Among Parental Perspectives of Children’s Theory of Mind, Relationships with Parents, and Social Difficulties

• In Event: 1-115 - Poster Session 03
  In Poster Session: PS 03 Section - Social Cognition

Integrative Statement

Theory of mind (ToM), or the ability to represent the mental state of others, is a social-cognitive skill related to individual differences in social experiences and relationships. For instance, children with siblings tend to perform better on tasks that measure ToM, somewhat driven by parental influences like more opportunities for discussion about mental states (Perner, Ruffman, & Leekam, 1994). Beyond sibling and family structure, we can also consider ToM through the broader lens of adaptive and healthy social-emotional connection with parents. Observations of mother-sibling relationships characterized by control, responsiveness, and affection are predictive of higher ToM (Dunn et al., 2002), suggesting that attachment security could play a role in ToM development. However, largely, evidence supporting this relationship has been mixed: secure attachment in infancy is predictive of ToM task performance at four years, but this association weakens by five years and is not well-replicated (Meins et al., 1998; 2002). Further, research in this context is limited in quantity and by reliance on false-belief task performance to measure ToM.
In this study, we examined whether and how parental reports of children’s ToM (previously found to map onto false-belief task performance and allow for somewhat more ecologically valid nuances in findings) at difference ages (during and beyond early childhood) is related to social-emotional experiences with parents, and social difficulties more broadly. We collected parent-reports (N = 207), including the following measures: Children’s Social Understanding Scale (Tahiroglu et al., 2014; α=.86), Parental Willingness to Serve as an Attachment Figure (scored from Block, 1965 Child-Rearing Practices Q-sort; α=.79), Child-Parent Relationship Scale (Pianta, 1992; α=.80; .85), and the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (Goodman, 1997; includes subscales of emotional symptoms, conduct problems, peer problems, hyperactivity, and prosocial behaviors; α=.87; .63; .73; .79; .76).
Preliminary results show that in bivariate correlations, ToM was positively related to parental willingness to serve as an attachment figure and closeness with parents, unrelated to number of siblings, and negatively related to conflict with parents and most social difficulties (See Table 1). Partial correlations (controlling for child age, which was positively related to ToM) revealed that these associations held regardless of age of children. To determine the respective strength of associations between ToM and family factors, we conducted a regression analysis in which ToM was regressed upon the predictors of willingness to serve as an attachment figure, closeness, conflict, age, and number of siblings. While controlling for these factors concurrently, only closeness and child age remained significant (see Table 2). Additional analyses will extend this research in two ways: first, to also include mind-mindedness (tied to heightened ToM) of parental open-ended descriptions of children; and secondly, to include subfactors (e.g., belief, knowledge, perception, desire, intention, and emotion) of ToM to determine whether these specific forms are differently related to the constructs of interest. Results contribute to the literature on children’s ToM development and suggest that parental relationships remain important to individual differences in ToM even beyond early childhood. Practical implications will also be discussed, including the utility of this information to caregivers.

Authors

• Aislinn Elizabeth Foutz, Roanoke College
  Presenting Author

• Danielle Findley-Van Nostrand, Roanoke College
  Non-Presenting Author

• Ciprianna Azar, Roanoke College
  Non-Presenting Author