Mothers’ Use of Cognitive State Verbs in Picture‐Book Reading and the Development of Children’s Understanding of Mind: A Longitudinal Study

Abstract

Mothers read stories to their children (N=41) aged between 3.3 years and 5.11 years old, and children then completed two false-belief tasks. One year later, mothers read a story to 37 of those children who were also given four tasks to assess their advanced understanding of mental states. Mothers' early use of cognitive verbs in picture-book reading correlated with their children's later understanding of mental states. Some pragmatic aspects of maternal input correlated with children's later outcomes. Two different factors in mothers' cognitive discourse were identified, suggesting a zone of proximal development in children's understanding of mental states.

Preschoolers’ Causal Reasoning During Shared Picture Book Storytelling: A Cross-Case Comparison Descriptive Study

“…To date, picture book research has largely focused on their potential to promote language and literacy skills and on parent-child interactions during shared reading (Fletcher & Reese, 2005 Jong, & Smeets, 2008). Only a few studies have used picture books to stimulate other cognitive and academic skills, such as promoting theory of mind understanding (e.g., Adrián, Clemente, & Villanueva, 2007;Symons, Peterson, Slaughter, Roche, & Doyle, 2005), understanding mathematical concepts (e.g., Anderson, Anderson, & Shapiro, 2005;Van den Heuvel-Panhuizen & Elia, 2011), and problem solving (e.g., Gosen, 2012). Furthermore, most picture book research focuses on interactions between child and adult (e.g., parent, teacher); only a few studies focus on interactions between children during picture book activities.…”

Improving Social Understanding of Preschool Children: Evaluation of a Training Program

“…It could be argued that in our study two kindergarten teachers have made a zone of proximal development or scaffolding in order to incorporate some social understanding skills (false belief and desire--belief-emotion understanding). There are various forms of evidence supporting this view of how the social understanding develops (Adrian, Clemente, & Villanueva, 2007;Carpendale & Lewis, 2006;de Rosnay & Hughes, 2006;Plessow-Wolfson & Epstein, 2005;Slaughter, Peterson, & Mackintosh, 2007). In the introduction we cited two training studies that demonstrate the possibility to train theory of mind (Hale & Tager-Flusberg, 2003;Lohmann & Tomasello, 2003).…”

Social cognition and pragmatic competence. The case of children with specific language impairment

“…En este sentido, la participación activa de los niños y niñas en diálogos sobre aspectos mentalistas en tareas de atención conjunta (ej. leer cuentos con adultos de apego), ha demostrado ser un predictor poderoso sus capacidades socio-cognitivas posteriores (Adrián, Clemente, & Villanueva, 2007). Además, Harris et al (2005) encontraron que los rasgos pragmáticos (ej.…”