Poster #185 - A Comparison of the Change in Mothers’ and Educators’ use of Internal State Talk When Toddlers’ Were 12 and 30 Months

• In Event: 3-206 - Poster Session 13
  In Poster Session: PS 13 Section - Social Cognition

Integrative Statement

Internal state talk – explicit language about perceptions, thoughts, feelings, desires, and other internal states – influences children's ability to understand their own and other’s mental processes, supporting development of Theory of Mind (Ruffman, Slade, & Crowe, 2002). The frequency of parents’ internal state talk changes over time, as does the specific internal states emphasized in their talk. Parents focus on desires and perceptions with one-year-olds, then shift to talk more about emotions and cognitions in later toddlerhood (McBratnie & Vallotton, 2018; Taumoepeau & Ruffman, 2006).

A quarter of US infants and toddlers spend significant portions of time in early care and education (Laughlin, 2013), making educator-child interactions an important developmental context. Since educators receive training about child development and spend their career working with children, they may know more than parents do about the mental capabilities of preverbal children, and thus use more internal state talk with infants and toddlers. However, parents know their individual children best, and have a tendency to over-interpret children’s behaviors as indicative of intention or skill (Adamson, Bakeman, Smith & Walters, 1987), which may lead to greater mentalization, and thus more frequent internal state talk. When compared, teachers produced greater frequency of internal state talk with 12-month infants in comparison to mothers (Farkas, Strasser, Badilla, & Santelices, 2017). However, few studies have compared parents’ and teachers’ internal state talk at different child ages to understand how these interactions change as children become verbal. We hypothesize that educators will use more frequent internal state talk and a wider variety of internal state talk than do parents, both when children are preverbal and verbal. Further, we hypothesize that educators’ level of training in child development will be associated with the frequency and variety of their internal state talk.

Method: A sample of 62 mother-child dyads were followed throughout toddlerhood. mother-child and educator-child interactions were recorded when children were 12 and 30 months old. Transcripts of caregiver and child talk were created from videos of 5-minute free-play interactions. Caregivers’ and children’s internal state talk were coded for frequency and type (e.g., cognitions, emotions, desires, etc.)

Analyses and Results: Preliminary analyses focus on frequencies within each type of internal state talk (See Table 1); further analyses will examine variety within types. Consistent with previous literature, mothers and educators talked more about desires and perceptions at 12 months and shifted to cognitions and more varied internal state talk at 30 months. Although educators had higher overall frequency of internal state talk at 12 and 30 months, mothers began to close that gap by increasing mean frequency of internal state talk between 12 and 30 months (see Figure 1). Further analysis will investigate the effect of teachers’ education on their internal state talk.

Discussion: Both mothers’ and educators’ verbal interactions with toddlers support social cognition; training caregivers about child development may increase these supports.

Authors

• Michaella McBratnie, Michigan State University
  Presenting Author

• Claire Vallotton, Michigan State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kalli Decker, Montana State University
  Non-Presenting Author