Poster #194 - One language for facts, another language for wishes: Bilingual mothers' socialization of their toddlers through mental-state-talk

• In Event: 3-053 - Poster Session 10
  In Poster Session: PS 10 Section - Social Cognition

Integrative Statement

Singapore is a multi-lingual society. English is the lingua franca used for communication among different ethnicities, for work and business purposes, and the primary language of instruction in school. A mother tongue language, such as Mandarin (used by approximately 77% of Singaporeans), is the language of one’s cultural community and is often used at home. Because these languages serve different purposes, Singaporeans switch between their languages depending on the social situation. Little is known about how bilingual children begin to understand the different functions their languages serve. Parents are the earliest agents of socialization children encounter. Of interest is how bilingual mothers introduce their child to each of their languages and if each language serves the same or a different purpose. According to Eisenberg et al.’s (1988b) model, one way parents contribute to a child’s socialization is by discussing others’ emotions. In the current study, we investigated how bilingual mothers discuss thoughts, desires and emotions through their mental state talk and how mothers’ mental state talk affects their child’s earliest language production of nouns and verbs in each language.

Thirty Singaporean bilingual (English-Mandarin) mothers were asked to engage their toddler (18- to 20-month-olds) using only English and only Mandarin counterbalanced across two 10-min free play-sessions. All play-sessions were transcribed in the languages that the dyad spoke. For each language condition, toddlers’ noun and verb, types and tokens were calculated. Mothers’ speech was coded by two separate coders for the frequency of mental state words and were divided into three categories: “cognitive” (e.g., think/ 想), “desire” (e.g., want/ 要), or “emotion” (e.g., happy/ 兴奋). Interrater reliability were .99 and .98 for English and Mandarin respectively.

Total mental state talk did not differ between languages (p=n.s.). To examine the effects of language and mental state type on the frequency of mental state talk, a 2 (Language) x 3 (Mental State Type) repeated-measures ANOVA was conducted. Mothers used significantly more desire words than cognitive and emotion words (F(2,58)=56.23, p<.01, ηp2=.66). Mental state types also significantly differed depending on which language was used (F(2,58)=6.97, p=.01, ηp2=.19). See Figure 1. Mothers used more desire words in Mandarin than in English and more cognitive words in English than in Mandarin. Mothers’ Mandarin desire words positively correlated to toddler’s Mandarin nouns (rtype(27)=.44, p<.05; rtoken(27)=.40, p<.05) as well as their Mandarin verbs (rtype(27)=.48, p<.01, rtoken(27)=.52, p<.01). Mothers’ Mandarin desire words also positively correlated to toddler’s English verbs (rtype(27)=.52, p<.01, rtoken(27)=.47, p=.01). Mothers’ English desire terms positively correlated with toddler’s English verbs (rtype(27)=.38, p<.05, rtoken(27)=.38, p<.05). See Table 1.

These results suggest that mothers may prepare their child the demands of the environment by using English to express one’s understanding of others’ thoughts and Mandarin to express one’s wishes and desires.

Authors

• Michelle Cheng, Nanyang Technological University
  Presenting Author

• Peipei Setoh, Nanyang Technological University
  Non-Presenting Author