How Mothers May Help Their Children Understand Other Peoples Thoughts
Short summary:
to children's ability to understand these concepts, between the ages of 4 and 4 ... children understand that our behaviour is governed by what we believe to be ...
Long summary:
How Mothers May Help Their Children Understand Other Peoples Thoughts and Feelings Understanding and making educated guesses about others thoughts and feelings is a key step in early development. It is likely that parents play an important part in this development. In this study, we asked how mothers conceptions of their children as individuals with their own thoughts, desires, and beliefs relate to childrens later understanding of other peoples minds. A group of mothers and children took part in a four-year study. The children were 6 months when the study began, and completed the study at 4 1/2 years. Mothers were observed playing with their 6-month-olds, and records were made of whether they commented on their babies states of mind, such as whether the baby seemed to want something, was thinking about something, or was feeling a particular emotion. Some mothers appeared very good at reading their babies minds, whereas others appeared to misinterpret what their babies were wanting, thinking, or feeling. When the children were aged 4, each mother was asked to describe her child. Again, we noted whether mothers talked about their childrens states of mind, or about their childrens behaviour or physical appearance. We found that the mothers who had been good at reading their babies minds at 6 months were more likely to describe their children at age 4 in terms of their desires, thoughts, and feelings. To see whether their mothers emphasis on states of mind was connected to childrens ability to understand these concepts, between the ages of 4 and 4 1/2, children took part in a number of tasks to measure their understanding of other peoples minds. For example, in one task a child had to use a story characters knowledge to predict where he would look for a chocolate. The character hides a chocolate in a red box before leaving the scene, and the child sees the chocolate being moved to a blue box while the character is away. If children understand that our behaviour is governed by what we believe to be true, rather than what really is true, then they will predict that the character will look for the chocolate in the red box the place where it was originally hidden. We found that childrens performance on these tasks was related to whether their mothers had conceptualised them in terms of their mental states. Children whose mothers had been able to read their minds when they were 6 months of ageto describe their babies in terms of their unspoken thoughts, desires, and feelingsshowed a better understanding of other peoples mental states and processes. Interestingly, mothers talking about their babies minds at 6 months appeared to be more important in predicting childrens later under-standing than mothers descriptions of their childrens mental states at age 4. This study suggests that very early exposure to talk about thoughts, wishes, and feelings may actually help children to understand their own and other peoples minds. How might this happen? Perhaps ...
Source: www.srcd.org
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