No evidence of an association between parental mind-mindedness at 9 months and language development at either 9 or 25 months in Swedish infants

Abstract

Mind-mindedness (MM), the parent’s propensity to treat their young child as an individual with a mind of their own, has repeatedly been found to be positively associated with subsequent child development outcomes. In the current Swedish study, the first aim was to investigate the main features of MM in this cultural context and the second aim was to investigate its association with early child language development. Sixty-three parent-child dyads participated. MM was assessed by videotaped laboratory-based parent-child dyad free-play sessions. Language development was assessed using the parent questionnaire Swedish Early Communicative Development Inventory (SECDI), a Swedish adaptation of the internationally used MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (MB-CDI). The ratio between Appropriate MM and Non-attuned MM was 4:1 and there was no statistically significant correlation between these two variables. There were no statistically significant correlations between Total MM or Appropriate MM and language ability ratings at either 9 or 25 months. This may be due to methodological issues concerning elicitation of MM in a Swedish context. We emphasize the importance of further theoretical and empirical studies of cross-cultural validation of MM.

Stressed Mothers Receiving Infant Mental Health-Based Early Head Start Increase in Mind-Mindedness

“…Notably, by the time toddlers were 36 months old, associations between age and MRC were no longer evident, suggesting that young toddlerhood may be a more developmentally salient time to examine directional and bidirectional associations. A recent study showed no associations between mind-mindedness in infancy and language skills in infancy or toddlerhood among a sample of Swedish infants and parents ( Nyberg et al, 2021 ) while an earlier study showed positive associations between maternal mind-mindedness at 12 months and toddlers’ expressive language a year later ( Laranjo and Bernier, 2013 ); it could be that mind-mindedness in early toddlerhood, rather than in infancy, plays a role in toddlers’ language, although this supposition is beyond the scope of this study. Such investigations reflect an interesting next step in the mind-mindedness literature, particularly given the emerging studies examining mind-mindedness and children’s language and cognitive outcomes in early childhood (e.g., Bernier et al, 2017 ; Aldrich et al, 2021 ).…”