BILINGUAL PARENTAL MENTAL STATE TALK AND CHILDREN’S THEORY-OF-MIND

Abstract

A growing body of literature has demonstrated that parental mental state talk (MST) is crucial in facilitating children’s theory-of-mind development. This study extends previous work by examining bilingual MST specifically, a relatively unexplored area of MST research. More importantly, this study investigates the specific mechanisms through which bilingual MST influences theory-of-mind understanding. A total of 119 children aged 30 to 59 months participated in this study with their parents, wherein parental MST was measured using a picture describing or storytelling task. Results revealed that English and Chinese MST differed significantly in terms of affect, desire, and cognitive words; however, no significant relationship between parental MST and children’s theory-of-mind were found. Additionally, language background was not found to moderate the relationship between cognitive MST and theory-of mind, and children’s mental state vocabulary (MSV) was not found to mediate the relationship between the total mental state utterances produced by parents and children’s theory-of-mind performance. This study provides novel insights into current research regarding bilingual MST, and points to the complexity of understanding children’s theory-of-mind development across cultures.