From Talk to Thought

Abstract

In a sample of Pacific Island families living in New Zealand (N = 45), this study tested the relation between caregivers' strength of ethnic identity and their use of desire, cognitive, and emotion language with their toddlers during a picture description task at 15, 20, 26, 33, and 39 months. Using multi-level growth modeling, caregivers' strength of ethnic identity predicted the change trajectories of caregivers' mental state talk over and above the effects of education levels, and these individual estimates were predictive of their children's performance on an emotion situation and knowledge access tasks at 39 months. We discuss the results in the light of theories regarding the role of culture and mental state language socialization of young children.

Does Parental Mind‐Mindedness Account for Cross‐Cultural Differences in Preschoolers’ Theory of Mind?

“…From a sociocultural perspective, differences across cultures might reflect contrasts in the relative salience of mental states within specific cultures (e.g., Lillard, 1998;Taumoepeau, 2015). In other words, delayed false belief understanding is to be expected in cultures in which mental states are not appropriate objects for conjecture.…”

Rethinking the Relationship between Social Experience and False-Belief Understanding: A Mentalistic Account

“…Preschoolers’ performance on elicited-response false-belief tasks is correlated with a variety of social factors (e.g., Perner et al, 1994; Holmes et al, 1996; Dunn and Cutting, 1999; Hughes et al, 1999; Meins et al, 2003; Lecce and Hughes, 2010; Mayer and Träuble, 2013; McAlister and Peterson, 2013; for detailed discussions of these factors and children’s social experience, see Carpendale and Lewis, 2004; Wellman, 2014; Taumoepeau, 2015). For instance, preschoolers from larger families (e.g., Perner et al, 1994) and those with same-aged or older siblings (e.g., McAlister and Peterson, 2013) show superior performance on elicited-response false-belief tasks.…”

“…Training that exposes preschoolers to additional mental-talk improves their elicited-response performance (e.g., Lohmann and Tomasello, 2003; Taumoepeau and Reese, 2013). Moreover, deaf children raised by hearing parents, who hear fewer references to mental states than their hearing counterparts, exhibit deficits in elicited-response performance (Gale et al, 1996; Moeller and Schick, 2006; Meristo et al, 2007), as do children from cultures where parents do not typically discuss mental states with their children (Mayer and Träuble, 2013; Taumoepeau, 2015). Preschoolers’ performance on elicited-response tasks is also related to their own personal use of mental-state language in naturalistic settings such as free play with peers (e.g., Brown et al, 1996) and in laboratory settings (e.g., Ruffman et al, 2002).…”

She Thinks in English, but She Wants in Mandarin: Differences in Singaporean Bilingual English-Mandarin Maternal Mental-state-talk

“…Parental mental-state-talk has been found to affect several aspects of a child's social development, including, but not limited to, socioemotional competence and theory of mind reasoning, even after controlling for age and language [6,7]. Despite its positive effects on children's social development, parental mental-state-talk has been primarily examined in monolingual Englishspeaking populations, and only a few studies have examined parental mental-state-talk in bilingual populations [8][9][10][11]. There, only one of the parents' languages, English, was examined [10,11], and thus research on parental mental-state-talk has yet to capture bilingual parents' mental-state-talk in its entirety.…”

“…Despite its positive effects on children's social development, parental mental-state-talk has been primarily examined in monolingual Englishspeaking populations, and only a few studies have examined parental mental-state-talk in bilingual populations [8][9][10][11]. There, only one of the parents' languages, English, was examined [10,11], and thus research on parental mental-state-talk has yet to capture bilingual parents' mental-state-talk in its entirety. If parents use language to transmit sociocultural values and norms, then differences between parents' mental-state-talk would arise where the two languages differ in sociocultural values and norms.…”