The relation between children's and mothers' mental state language and theory-of-mind understanding.

@article{citeulike:488943, abstract = {This study investigated the relation between mothers' utterances and theory of mind in a longitudinal study involving three time points over 1 year. Mothers were asked to describe some pictures to 82 children at all three time points. Mothers' use of mental state utterances in these descriptions at early time points was consistently correlated with later theory-of-mind understanding. This was true even when a number of potential mediators were accounted for, including children's own use of mental state language, their earlier theory-of-mind understanding, their language ability, their age, mothers' education, and other types of mother utterances. Mothers' mental state utterances seemed genuinely causal because early theory-of-mind ability was not related to later mother mental state utterances (i.e., it was not a reciprocal relation). Results also showed that children's desire talk preceded their talk about beliefs.}, address = {University of Sussex, Brighton, United Kingdom.}, author = {Ruffman, T. and Slade, L. and Crowe, E. }, citeulike-article-id = {488943}, issn = {0009-3920}, journal = {Child Dev}, keywords = {belief, desire, language, language\_acquisition, mental\_talk, theory\_of\_mind, tom\_in\_motion}, number = {3}, pages = {734--751}, posted-at = {2006-02-01 22:05:09}, priority = {5}, title = {The relation between children's and mothers' mental state language and theory-of-mind understanding.}, url = {http://view.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12038548}, volume = {73}, year = {2002} }

TY - JOUR ID - citeulike:488943 L3 - citeulike-article-id:488943 TI - The relation between children's and mothers' mental state language and theory-of-mind understanding. JF - Child Dev VL - 73 IS - 3 SP - 734 EP - 751 AD - University of Sussex, Brighton, United Kingdom. SN - 0009-3920 N2 - This study investigated the relation between mothers' utterances and theory of mind in a longitudinal study involving three time points over 1 year. Mothers were asked to describe some pictures to 82 children at all three time points. Mothers' use of mental state utterances in these descriptions at early time points was consistently correlated with later theory-of-mind understanding. This was true even when a number of potential mediators were accounted for, including children's own use of mental state language, their earlier theory-of-mind understanding, their language ability, their age, mothers' education, and other types of mother utterances. Mothers' mental state utterances seemed genuinely causal because early theory-of-mind ability was not related to later mother mental state utterances (i.e., it was not a reciprocal relation). Results also showed that children's desire talk preceded their talk about beliefs. KW - belief KW - desire KW - language KW - language_acquisition KW - mental_talk KW - theory_of_mind KW - tom_in_motion AU - Ruffman, T AU - Slade, L AU - Crowe, E PY - 2002///n UR - http://view.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12038548 ER -