Not just quantity but also quality of language: Cross-cultural comparisons of maternal mental state talk in New Zealand, Australia, and China

Abstract

Western mothers use more mental state talk with children than do Chinese mothers (e.g., “think”, “like”, “happy”). The present study aimed to examine whether Western mothers not only produced a greater amount of mental state talk, but also used a wider range of mental state terms (i.e., greater lexical variety) compared to Chinese mothers. We compared maternal mental state talk in 271 mother-child dyads from New Zealand, Australia and China, and coded both quantity (i.e., frequency) and quality (i.e., type, variety, valence) of mothers’ mental state talk to their 2.5- to 5-year-olds. Western mothers produced more talk about cognitions and emotions, as well as modulations of assertions, but a similar amount of desire talk, compared to Chinese mothers, with the same patterns found in the variety of talk. Western mothers produced an overall higher amount of mental state talk and a greater variety of mental state terms, but crucially, still produced more MS talk after controlling for the variety. Neither the amount nor the variety of maternal MS talk was correlated with children’s theory of mind. These findings shed light on the diverse ways that mothers construe and describe mental states in different cultures, and highlight the importance of examining different aspects of maternal mental state talk and their impact on children’s theory of mind in future longitudinal studies.

Effects of Bilingualism, Household Size and Siblings on Theory of Mind Development in Pakistani and British Children

“…Indeed, research has repeatedly indicated that amount of adults' mental state talk with children is positively related to their mentalizing development (Peterson & Slaughter, 2003;Ruffman et al, 2002Ruffman et al, , 2006. However, studies have revealed that adults from non-Western countries, including Pakistan, rarely engage in mental state talk with their children (Degotardi et al, 2022;Kong et al, 2023;Nawaz & Lewis, 2018;Vinden, 1996). Since the widest variation in number of family members was largely observed in the Pakistani sample, the increased adult interaction that Pakistani children would receive may be of 'lower quality' and therefore may not have benefitted the children's mentalizing development to such a degree.…”

Fostering language learning strategies through comparative linguistics: future directions for Azerbaijani higher education

“…In the proposed paper, one agrees that the influence of the mother tongue is one of the main obstacles in learning a foreign language. Kong et al (2023) note that comparative linguistics attempts to research the contrast of two or more languages synchronously, to describe their similarities and differences in order to identify theoretical patterns and serve other relative fields. However, the diachronic element is essential in foreign language learning.…”