Social Learning in Families: Maternal Cognitive Mind-Mindedness and Maternal Time Predict Children’s Inhibitory Control

• In Event: Observing, Conforming, and Internalizing: How Does Social Learning Occur Across Different Contexts and Cultures?

Abstract

In toddlerhood, social learning occurs naturally in mother-child interactions. Mothers provide comments and feedback on children’s behaviors, and in turn, young children learn from such verbal scaffoldings and improve their cognitive skills. The association between maternal mind-mindedness and children’s inhibitory control represents one of such links. Mind-mindedness refers to the ability to attune to children’s mental states and correctly interpret their thoughts (McMahon & Bernier, 2017). When mothers use mind-related comments, especially those that accurately interpret children’s cognitive processes (i.e., cognitive mind-mindedness), children learn to describe and explain what is on their thoughts (Aldrich et al., 2021). This is a critical path for young children to understand the cognitive aspects of an event (contingency or causality) and refine the proficiency of inhibitory control skills.

The association between toddlerhood cognitive mind-mindedness and inhibitory control, however, has not been examined with Chinese families. Moreover, researchers have overlooked maternal time, namely, how long mothers spend taking care of the child, when investigating how parenting is related to early childhood inhibitory control. It is possible that although some mothers display good parenting quality in laboratory observations, they do not have enough time to actually interact with the child in reality. Yet thus far, few studies have examined together how quality of parenting and quantity of parenting is developmentally relevant to the development of inhibitory control.

To address these research gaps, we conducted the current study. We hypothesize that maternal cognitive mind-mindedness, maternal time, and their interactions are all positively predictive of children’s inhibitory control throughout toddlerhood. We use a 3-wave longitudinal observational sample of 88 Chinese families with young children. We coded maternal cognitive mind-mindedness from two free-play and one book reading tasks at 14, 25, and 38 months. Mothers rated the question “how many hours you spend on taking care of the child per week (excluding sleep time)” on a 5-point scale at 14, 25, and 38 months. Children’s inhibitory control was assessed using age-appropriate observational tasks at 25 and 38 months. Children’s language, as a covariate, was assessed at 25 and 38 months.

After accounting for children’s gender and language, interactions of maternal cognitive mind-mindedness with maternal time were found to positively predict children’s inhibitory control, both concurrently and longitudinally (see Table 1). A repeated pattern of simple slope results was shown across all these interaction effects (see Figure 1). Specifically, for mothers with a high level of cognitive mind-mindedness (M + 1 SD), maternal time was positively associated with children’s inhibitory control, thus showing a conditional dosage effect of mind-mindedness on inhibitory control. In contrast for mothers with a low level of cognitive mind-mindedness (M – 1 SD), maternal time was not associated with children’s inhibitory control.
In conclusion, our findings suggest that there are thresholds for maternal cognitive mind-mindedness in real life, above which the accumulation of this parenting can facilitate children’s inhibitory control skills. Below the threshold level, however, cognitive mind-mindedness is no longer meaningful in changing the rank order of children’s inhibitory control as a social learning approach.

Authors

• Shuyang Dong, University of Hong Kong (HKU)
  Presenting Author

• Zhengyan Wang, Capital Normal University

• Nanhua Cheng