The Relationship Between Maternal Mental State Language and Questions During Book-reading on Theory of Mind Abilities of Low-SES English Language Learners

• In Event: Poster Session 08
  In Poster Session: PS 08 Topic - Social Cognition

Abstract

Introduction: Research highlights the importance of early book-reading interactions for the promotion of social-cognitive development (Adrían, Clemente, Villanueva, & Rieffe, 2005). Maternal mental-state language and questions about internal states of characters in these interactions are important for developing theory of mind (ToM) (Adrían, Clemente, & Lidón, 2007). While mother’s mental-state language and questions has been linked with ToM, the relationship between maternal language input and ToM development is under-explored in populations of Low-SES English language learners (ELLs), many of whom may be experiencing shifting language dominance. The current study therefore investigated the relationship between maternal mental-state talk and questions in shared book-reading interactions and child ToM development in low-SES ELLs who exhibit shifting language dominance from Spanish to English from 36- to 54- months.

Hypotheses: (1) Increased maternal use of cognitive mental-state verbs (e.g., think, know) will be associated with increased ToM outcomes; and,
(2) Increased maternal use of questions referring to mental-states will be associated with increased children’s ToM outcomes.

Methods: Cross-sectional analyses of data from 69 Latinx mother-child dyads participating in a larger study of pediatric parenting interventions. Mother’s primary language and primary language spoken to child was Spanish. Children determined to be dominant in English through parent interview and the Pre-LAS 2000 Simon Says task administered in English and Spanish. Dyads video-taped at child age 54-months sharing the wordless picture book, Frog Where Are You. Interactions transcribed using CHAT and maternal mental-state language coded based on methodology by Bretherton & Beeghley (1982) for cognitive mental-state verbs and analyzed using CLAN. Transcripts also coded for total amount of questions eliciting mental-states about 1) character’s mental-states and 2) mental-states of the child. Child ToM abilities assessed using five tasks from the Wellman & Liu (2004) ToM scale including 1- other’s desire, 2- knowledge access, 3- contents false-belief, 4- other’s belief, and 5- explicit false-belief. Each ToM tasks scored as 1-Pass or 0-Fail; Total ToM score computed by summing the scores on each task (range 0-5).

Results: Regression analyses, adjusted for child age in months, demonstrated no significant effect of mental-state language (e.g., cognitive verbs) and internal state questions on child Total ToM. Further analyses examining each ToM task separately showed a significant relationship between the maternal mental-state questions about characters and the knowledge access task (β = .16, p = .029), and a marginally significant relationship between maternal mental-state questions about the child and the contents false-belief task (β = .14, p = .057) (Table 1).

Conclusions: The use of maternal cognitive-state words or questions during book-reading was not associated with Total ToM. However, the use of internal state questions in these interactions was associated with the understanding of knowledge access and marginally with contents false-belief. These findings suggest that maternal mental-state language may not relate to ToM skills in the same way for low-SES ELL children as has been shown in other populations; rather pragmatic attributes of these interactions such as extra textual questions may be more closely associated with their development of these skills.

Authors

• Alejandra Reinoso, Northwestern University
  Presenting Author

• Adriana Weisleder, Northwestern University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Erin Roby, NYU Grossman School of Medicine
  Non-Presenting Author

• Alan L Mendelsohn, NYU Grossman School of Medicine
  Non-Presenting Author

• Carolyn Brockmeyer Cates, Purchase College, SUNY
  Non-Presenting Author