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Let's Talk: Parents' Mental Talk (Not Mind-Mindedness or Mindreading Capacity) Predicts Children's False Belief Understanding.

Accepted version
Peer-reviewed

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Type

Article

Change log

Authors

Hughes, Claire 

Abstract

Although one might expect parents' mind-mindedness (MM; the propensity to view children as mental agents) to relate to everyday mental-state talk (MST) and theory-of-mind capacity, evidence to support this view is lacking. In addition, both the uniqueness and the specificity of relations between parental MM, parental MST, and children's false belief understanding (FBU) are open to question. To address these three gaps, this study tracked 117 preschoolers (60 boys) and their parents across a 13-month period (Mage  = 3.94 years, SD = 0.53, at Time 1). Parental MM, MST, and theory-of-mind capacity showed little overlap. Both MM and MST were weakly associated with children's concurrent FBU, but in line with social constructivist accounts, only MST predicted later FBU.

Description

Keywords

Adult, Child, Child, Preschool, Comprehension, Female, Humans, Male, Parent-Child Relations, Parents, Social Perception, Theory of Mind

Journal Title

Child Dev

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

0009-3920
1467-8624

Volume Title

90

Publisher

Wiley
Sponsorship
Economic and Social Research Council (ES/J021180/1)