PARENT-CHILD TALK AND CHILDREN’S MENTAL STATE UNDERSTANDING

Abstract

To date, current literature has demonstrated robust links between parental mental state talk (MST) and children’s Theory-of-Mind (ToM). Specifically, parental cognitive talk has been shown to facilitate children’s false-belief understanding (FBU). To further examine whether the relations between parental MST and children’s ToM are domain specific, this study extends previous work by investigating the relations between parental emotion discourse and children’s hidden emotion understanding (HBU). More importantly, this study sought to examine if parent-child reciprocity mediated the relationship between parental MST and children’s ToM. A total of 116 Singaporean children participated in this study with their parents, whereby parental MST was measured via a storytelling task with a wordless picture book. Results revealed no significant correlations between parental MST and children’s ToM. Moreover, we also found that parent-child reciprocity did not significantly mediate the relationship between parental MST and children’s ToM. This study offers an alternate perspective to present literature and suggests a limitation to the generalizability of previously established associations between parental MST and children’s ToM.