The Relation between Change in Mothers’ Discourse across Repeated Storytellings and Theory of Mind

• In Event: Theory of mind development and children’s representation of beliefs

Abstract

Two recent meta-analysis (Devine & Hughes, 2018; Tompkins et al., 2018) provide converging evidence for the relation between parents’ mental state language (MSL) in storytelling interactions and their children’s theory of mind (ToM) abilities. This line of research almost exclusively utilizes a kind of design which examines parents’ (typically mothers’) discourse characteristics in their first narration of a wordless story book (e.g., Symons et al., 2005; Slaughter et al., 2007). The practice of focusing on the narrative discourse of the first and only telling of a story is likely to produce an incomplete understanding of the effect of storytelling discourse on theory of mind abilities (Schapira et al., 2020). Multiple readings of the same book happen ordinarily in real life between parents and their children. Across multiple readings, readers adjust their narration according to listeners’ prior knowledge of the story. The current study investigated the relations between the change in mothers’ language from the first reading of a novel book to the second and children’s theory of mind abilities.
In the current study 126 mother child dyads visited the university lab. The children were approximately evenly distributed across the age groups of 3, 4, and 5. First, children completed theory of mind and executive function. Following the cognitive tests, mothers’ narrated the wordless storybook `Frog, Where are you?` (Meyer, 1968). Seven to ten days after the lab visit, mother-child dyads were visited at the homes. First, children completed language measures. Second, mothers narrated the same book again. Mothers’ book-related discourse was transcribed and coded for mental state word usage. In addition, each mental state usage was classified as either referencing the story characters or referencing the self or the child).
In order to control for differences in length of talk, all analyses were carried out on proportion scores. The results revealed positive correlations between mothers’ use of mental state language in reference to story characters at both storytelling sessions (See Table 1). In contrast, mothers’ use of mental state language in reference to others (the child, themselves) were negatively correlated with children’s theory of mind abilities at both readings. An analysis of the references of mothers’ language in the first reading revealed an effect of children’s age (p = .005, ŋ2 = .06). Mothers of 5-year-olds used more mental state language in reference to the story characters as compared to the mothers of 3- and 4-year-olds. In addition, they used less mental state language in reference to themselves or their children as compared to mothers of 3- and 4-year-olds (all ps<.001). Finally, results revealed that the decrease in mothers’ references to self and others (as opposed to story characters) positively predicted children’s false belief abilities even when controlling for age, language and EF abilities (See Table 2). The results will be discussed with their implications for our understanding of adults’ dynamic scaffolding practices in social interactions that support young children socio-cognitive abilities.

Authors

• Hande Ilgaz, Bilkent University
  Presenting Author

• Elif Burumlu Kisa, Bilkent University
  Non-Presenting Author