What are you thinking? The role of mentalization in children’s dyadic interactions with unfamiliar peers.

• In Event: Poster Session 05
  In Poster Session: PS 05 Topic - Social Relationships

Abstract

In order to navigate social settings, children must identify and interpret a wide variety of information so they can engage in successful reciprocal interactions with others (Hudson et al., 2018). Mentalizing is the process by which individuals use social cues to reason about the mental states of others in an attempt to predict future behaviors (Sabbagh, 2004). As over mentalizing is an elaborative cognitive process, this has the potential to distract children from future rapidly changing cues that occur during dynamic, live social interactions. Therefore, over mentalizing may negatively affect children’s abilities to engage in fluid, reciprocal interactions with their peers. The goal of the current study is to examine the associations between mentalizing styles and children’s observed behaviors, and the behaviors of a novel social partner, during live interactions.
Sixty-seven children aged 9-11 (Mage=10.17, SDage=0.77) participated in two visits (28 completed dyads). In Visit 1, children completed the Mentalization Task (Sharp et al., 2007) where they view 15 ambiguous social scenarios, responding to the prompt “If this happened to you, what do you think other children would think about you?”. Responses are coded for mentalization (under, correct, over) and over mentalizing bias scores will be created (total correct subtracted from total over responses) to evaluate over mentalizing tendencies. In Visit 2, children were paired with an age- and gender-matched unfamiliar peer and were observed as they complete a series of collaborative tasks. During the Get to Know You task, children were left alone for 5 minutes to get acquainted. Interactions are being coded from video to quantify participants’ levels of openness, social ease, and conversation (1=low, 5=high). Additionally, the frequency of children’s seeks (asking for information) and shares (sharing information) are recorded across the task. It is anticipated that a principal component analysis will support the creation of a composite across all global and frequency codes to index Social Engagement. Data collection is complete, and coding of data is ongoing. Coding will be complete by December 2020 and complete statistical analyses will be conducted prior to the Biennial Meeting of SRCD, April 2021.
It is hypothesized that greater over mentalizing biases will negatively impact the quality and reciprocity of children’s social interactions. Using an Actor-Partner Interdependence Model (APIM; Kenny & Ledermann, 2010), we will examine the effects of children’s own over mentalizing biases on their own Social Engagement (i.e., actor effects) and on their unfamiliar peer’s Social Engagement (i.e., partner effects). It is hypothesized that children who display an over mentalizing bias will display less Social Engagement, as they will be preoccupied with their own internal reasoning processes and by result, appear uninterested. In turn, their partners will show less Social Engagement as well, as they may perceive their peer’s preoccupation as a lack of interest and unfriendliness. Discussion will focus around the implications of children’s own internal reasoning and its impact on children’s own social behaviours and those of their peers, as this can have wider effects for children’s overall social functioning.

Authors

• Emma Sophia Green, University of Waterloo
  Presenting Author

• Claudia Labahn, University of Waterloo
  Non-Presenting Author

• Heather Henderson, University of Waterloo
  Non-Presenting Author