Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-skm99 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T03:33:20.964Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Maternal mental state talk and infants' early gestural communication*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

VIRGINIA SLAUGHTER ,
CANDIDA C. PETERSON  and
MALINDA CARPENTER
VIRGINIA SLAUGHTER*
Affiliation:
The University of Queensland, Australia
CANDIDA C. PETERSON
Affiliation:
The University of Queensland, Australia
MALINDA CARPENTER
Affiliation:
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Germany
*
Address for correspondence: Virginia Slaughter, The University of Queensland, Australia, School of Psychology, Brisbane, Australia4072. fax: 617-3365-4466. e-mail: vps@psy.uq.edu.au
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Twenty-four infants were tested monthly for the production of imperative and declarative gestures between 0 ; 9 and 1 ; 3 and concurrent mother–infant free-play sessions were conducted at 0 ; 9, 1 ; 0 and 1 ; 3 (Carpenter, Nagell & Tomasello, 1998). Free-play transcripts were subsequently coded for maternal talk about mental states. Results revealed that the earlier infants produced imperative gestures, the more frequently their mothers made reference to the infants' own volitional states (want, try, need, etc.) at 1 ; 3. The same relation also emerged using maternal reports of their infants' gestural communication on a standard language development measure. These results indicate that mothers' talk about desires and intentions is linked to their infants' early developing communicative competence.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 36 , Issue 5 , November 2009 , pp. 1053 - 1074
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

[*]

An Australian Research Council Discovery Grant to the first two authors supported this work. We thank Katherine Nagell and Michael Tomasello for their contributions to the original dataset and for their willingness to share the data for the current study. We also thank Philippa Neary for her work on the maternal language coding. We are also grateful to two anonymous reviewers for their feedback on earlier versions of the manuscript.

References

REFERENCES

Acredolo, L. & Goodwyn, S. (1990). Sign language in babies: The significance of symbolic gesturing for understanding language development. In Vasta, R. (ed.) Annals of child development, 1–42. London: Jessica Kingsley.Google Scholar
Astington, J. (2001). The future of theory of mind research: Understanding motivational states, the role of language and real world consequences. Child Development 72, 685–87.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Baron-Cohen, S. (1993). From attention–goal psychology to belief–desire psychology: The development of a theory of mind and its dysfunction. In Baron-Cohen, S., Tager-Flusberg, H. & Cohen, D. (eds), Understanding other minds: Perspectives from autism, 59–82. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bartsch, K. & Wellman, H. (1995). Children talk about the mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bates, E., Benigni, L., Bretherton, I., Camaioni, L. & Volterra, V. (1979). The emergence of symbols. Cognition and communication in infancy. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Beeghly, M., Bretherton, I. & Mervis, C. (1986). Mothers' internal state language to toddlers: The socialization of psychological understanding. British Journal of Developmental Psychology 4, 247–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Behne, T., Carpenter, M., Call, J. & Tomasello, M. (2005). Unwilling versus unable: Infants' understanding of intentional action. Developmental Psychology 41, 328–37.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bretherton, I. & Beeghly, M. (1982). Talking about internal states: The acquisition of an explicit theory of mind. Developmental Psychology 18, 906–921.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carpenter, M., Nagell, K. & Tomasello, M. (1998). Social cognition, joint attention, and communicative competence from 9 to 15 months of age. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, Volume 63(4).CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cohen, J. (1988). Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences, 2nd ed. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Desrochers, S., Morissette, P. & Ricard, M. (1995). Two perspectives on pointing in infancy. In Moore, C. & Dunham, P. (eds) Joint attention: Its origins and role in development, 85–101. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Dunn, J., Bretherton, I. & Munn, P. (1987). Conversations about feeling states between mothers and their young children. Developmental Psychology 23, 132–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dunn, J., Brown, J., Slomkowski, C., Tesla, C. & Youngblade, L. (1991). Young children's understanding of other people's feelings and beliefs: Individual differences and their antecedents. Child Development 62, 1352–66.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fenson, L., Dale, P., Reznick, J., Bates, E., Thal, D. & Pethnick, S. (1994). Variability in early communicative development. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, Volume 59(5).CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fenson, L., Dale, P., Reznick, J., Thai, D., Bates, E., Hartung, J., Pethick, S. & Reilly, J. (1993). MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories: User's Guide and Technical Manual. San Diego: Singular.Google Scholar
Gergely, G., Nádasdy, Z., Csibra, G. & Biro, S. (1995). Taking the intentional stance at 12 months of age. Cognition 56, 165–93.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jenkins, J. M., Turrell, S., Kogushi, Y., Lollis, S. & Ross, H. (2003). Longitudinal investigation of the dynamics of mental state talk in families. Child Development 74, 905–920.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Legerstee, M. & Barillas, Y. (2003). Sharing attention and pointing to objects at 12 months: Is the intentional stance implied. Cognitive Development 18, 91–110.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liszkowski, U., Carpenter, M. & Tomasello, M. (2007). Pointing out new news, old news, and absent referents at 12 months of age. Developmental Science 10, F1–F7.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Meins, E. & Fernyhough, C. (1999). Linguistic acquisitional style and mentalising development: The role of maternal mind-mindedness. Cognitive Development 14, 363–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meins, E., Fernyhough, C., Wainwright, R., Clark-Carter, D., Gupta, M. D., Fradley, E. & Tuckey, M. (2003). Pathways to understanding mind: Construct validity and predictive validity of maternal mind-mindedness. Child Development 74, 1194–1211.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Meins, E., Fernyhough, C., Wainwright, R., Gupta, M. D., Fradley, E. & Tuckey, M. (2002). Maternal mind-mindedness and attachment security as predictors of theory of mind understanding. Child Development 73, 1715–26.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Moore, C. & Corkum, V. (1994). Social understanding at the end of the first year of life. Developmental Review 14, 349–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nelson, K. (2005). Language pathways into the community of minds. In Astington, J. W. & Baird, J. A. (eds) Why language matters for theory of mind, 26–49. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perucchini, P. & Camaioni, L. (1993). When intentional communication emerges? Developmental dissociations between declarative and imperative functions of the pointing gesture. Poster presented at the Developmental Conference of the British Psychological Society, Birmingham, UK, September.Google Scholar
Peterson, C. & Slaughter, V. (2003). Opening windows into the mind: Mothers' preferences for mental state explanations and children's theory of mind. Cognitive Development 18, 399–429.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Phillips, A. T., Wellman, H. M. & Spelke, E. S. (2002). Infants' ability to connect gaze and emotional expression to intentional action. Cognition 85, 53–78.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ruffman, T., Slade, L. & Crowe, E. (2002). The relation between child and mothers' mental state language and theory-of-mind understanding. Child Development 73, 734–51.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sabbagh, M. A. & Callanan, M. A. (1998). Metarepresentation in action: Children's theories of mind developing and emerging in parent–child conversations. Developmental Psychology 34, 491–502.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shatz, M., Wellman, H. M. & Silber, S. (1983). The acquisition of mental verbs: A systematic investigation of the first reference to mental state. Cognition 14, 301–321.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Slaughter, V., Peterson, C. & Carpenter, M. (2008). Maternal talk about mental states and the emergence of joint visual attention. Infancy 13, 640–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Slaughter, V., Peterson, C. & Mackintosh, E. (2007). Mind what mother says: Narrative input and theory of mind in typical children and those on the autism spectrum. Child Development 78, 839–58.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Symons, D. (2004). Mental state discourse and theory of mind: Internalization of self–other understanding within a social–cognitive framework. Developmental Review 24, 159–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Symons, D., Fossum, K. & Collins, K. (2006). A longitudinal study of belief and desire state discourse during mother–child play and later false belief understanding. Social Development 15, 676–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taumoepeau, M. & Ruffman, T. (2006). Mother and infant talk about mental states relates to desire language and emotion understanding. Child Development 77, 465–81.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Taumoepeau, M. & Ruffman, T. (2008). Stepping stones to others' minds: Maternal talk relates to child mental state language and emotion understanding at 15, 24 and 33 months. Child Development 79, 284–302.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Thompson, R. A. (2006). Conversation and developing understanding: Introduction to the special issue. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly 52, 1–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tomasello, M. & Carpenter, M. (2005). The emergence of social cognition in three young chimpanzees. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, Volume 70(1).Google ScholarPubMed
Tomasello, M. & Todd, J. (1983). Joint attention and lexical acquisition style. First Language 4, 197–212.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Volterra, V., Caselli, M. C., Capirci, O. & Pizzuto, E. (2005). Gesture and the emergence and development of language. In Tomasello, M. & Slobin, D. I. (eds) Beyond nature–nurture: Essays in honor of Elizabeth Bates, 3–40. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Vygotsky, L. S. (1962/1986). Thought and language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar