Mental-state Language in Latinx Families With low Socioeconomic Status: Associations With Home Language-based Activities

• In Event: The Implications of Family and Home Environments for Development in Early and Middle Childhood

Abstract

Mental-state language, talk that refers to psychological states including thoughts (think; cognition terms), feelings (happy; emotion terms), and desires (want; desire terms), is associated with children’s social cognition abilities (Ruffman et al., 2002). Most work on mental-state language has focused on middle-class White families (Ensor & Hughes, 2008). However, research suggests that the quantity and nature of mental-state language used in parent-child interactions varies across cultural/ethnic backgrounds and socioeconomic status (SES) (Roby & Scott, 2022). Despite this, researchers have not examined the use of mental-state language across different categories and the factors associated with mental-state among Latinx families with low SES, who are part of the largest ethnic minority population in the US. We sought to address this gap in a low-SES sample through: 1) describing mothers’ use of mental-state language; 2) analyzing potential predictors including cultural factors (language) and parents’ language-based activities in the home, which provide opportunities to use complex speech.

The sample included 246 low SES mother-infant dyads enrolled at birth in a larger study of parenting interventions (Mendelsohn et al., 2018). Demographic information (including preferred language) was collected at birth. At 4.5 years, mothers were interviewed using the STIMQ2, (Dreyer et al., 1996), a measure of home language-based interactions with subscales focused on reading, teaching, and verbal responsivity. Mothers-child dyads were also videotaped sharing a wordless picture-book. Interactions were transcribed and coded for frequency of cognition, emotion, and desire terms produced.

Descriptive analyses (Table1) indicated that mothers referenced emotions the most and desires the least. Separate multiple regressions predicting mothers’ use of each mental-state type from language, and home language-based interaction factors showed that in each case, the model accounted for a significant proportion of the variance in mental-state language, all Fs > 9.90, all ps < .001 (Table2). In each model, home language-based interaction factors predicted mothers’ mental-state talk, though different kinds of activities were associated with different types of talk. Cognitive talk was most associated with reading quantity, emotion talk was most associated with verbal responsivity, and desire talk was most associated with reading quality. Interestingly, English language was associated with mothers’ tendency to use cognition terms, but not emotion or desire terms.

These findings shed light on how different mental-state terms are used among Latinx families with low SES, and how language and the home environment relate differentially to particular categories of talk in this group. The fact that language predicted cognition, but not emotion or desire language provides additional evidence of cultural differences in how particular mental-state terms are used. Associations between mental-state language and home language-based activities suggest that specific aspects of the home environment afford parents the opportunity to discuss different kinds of mental states. Mothers in this study used less mental-state language than reported in prior work (Roby & Scott, 2018), despite producing comparable numbers of utterances. Future work should examine how Latinx parents with low SES use different mental-state terms across contexts to optimize assessing mental-state language in this population.

Authors

• Maya Matalon, NYU Grossman School of Medicine
  Presenting Author

• Carolyn Brockmeyer Cates, Purchase College, SUNY

• Alan L Mendelsohn, NYU Grossman School of Medicine

• Erin Roby, NYU Grossman School of Medicine