Maternal mind-mindedness and attachment security as predictors of theory of mind understanding.

By E. Meins, Charles Fernyhough, Rachel Wainwright, Mani Das Gupta, Emma Fradley, Michelle R. Tuckey. Child Development, 2002

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This study investigated relations between social interaction during infancy and children's subsequent theory of mind (ToM). Infant-mother pairs (N = 57) were observed in a free-play context at 6 months. Interactions were coded for (a) mothers' use of mental state language that commented appropriately on the infants' mental states, and (b) mothers' use of mental state language that did not appropriately reflect their infants' minds. A third variable was (c) security of attachment, which was assessed using the Strange Situation procedure at 12 months. Performance on a battery of ToM tasks at 45 and 48 months was positively correlated with (a), but was not related to (b) or (c). A regression analysis showed that mothers' use of appropriate mental state comments independently predicted overall ToM performance, accounting for 11% of the variance. Children's verbal ability was the only other independent predictor of ToM performance, accounting for 16% of the variance. These findings represent the earliest known social predictor of individual differences in ToM.

Subfields: Developmental and Educational Psychology, Pharmacy, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0876ba3d8683485b3292d035a08f8be8eabcfe19

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Citations in the corpus

Family emotional climate, attachment security and young children's emotion knowledge in a high risk sample (2006, positive): “…with their 6-month-old children, referred to asmindmindedness, shows longitudinal associations with children’s theory of mind development (Meins et al., 2002), presumably because mothers’ descriptions of internal states supports children’s understanding of causality in emotion and…”
HIGHER-ORDER THEORY OF MIND AND SOCIAL COMPETENCE IN SCHOOL-AGE CHILDREN (2006, background): “2005) and is positively affected by quality of parental interaction (MCELWAIN and VOLLING 2004; MEINS et al. 2002; SYMONS and CLARK 2000) and quantity of sibling and extended-family interaction (LEWIS et al.”
The persistent sampling bias in developmental psychology: A call to action (2017, positive): “Similarly, early childhood development programs are frequently based on sensitivity and mindmindedness (Meins et al., 2002; Slade, 2005) as the core elements of optimal parenting that should be supported.”
Mother-Child Reminiscing and Children's Understanding of Mind (2006, background): “Mothers’ willingness to impute appropriate intentional states to their infants is critical in children’s own later understanding of mind (Meins, 1997; Meins & Fernyhough, 1999; Meins et al., 2002).”
Mothers' and Fathers' Use of Internal State Talk with their Young Children (2008, background): “Even very early in development, maternal mind-mindedness (a mother’s tendency to relate and to talk to their infants as separate psychological entities) at six months predicts later ToM performance at 45 and 48 months (Meins et al., 2002).”
Attachment, parent -child discourse and theory of mind development (2008, background): “beyond the effects of mental state language (Meins et al., 2002).”
Getting Vygotskian about theory of mind: Mediation, dialogue, and the development of social understanding (2008, positive): “During the period that follows the emergence of intentional-agent understanding, language input from caregivers has an important secondary role in scaffolding the acquisition of folk-psychological mental state terms and concepts (Meins et al., 2002; Carpendale & Lewis, 2004).”
From external regulation to self-regulation: early parenting precursors of young children's executive functioning. (2010, background): “Mind-mindedness has good convergent and predictive validity with measures of maternal sensitivity, mother–child attachment security, and child theory of mind understanding (Meins et al., 2001; Meins et al., 2002).”
Alien voices and inner dialogue: towards a developmental account of auditory verbal hallucinations (2004, background): “Mothers of insecurely attached children have been shown to be less competent at adopting their child’s perspective in collaborative problem-solving tasks (Meins, 1997), and less likely to treat their infants as individuals with mental states of their own (Meins, Fernyhough, Russell, & Clark-Carter, ”
Modeling maternal emotion-related socialization behaviors in a low-income sample: Relations with toddlers’ self-regulation (2012, background): “(Meins et al., 2002), emotion understanding (Dunn, Brown, & Beardsall, 1991; Warren & Stifter, 2008), and emotional expressiveness (Sallquist et al.”
Constructing an understanding of mind: The development of children's social understanding within social interaction (2004, background): “She found that maternal child-centered (mindminded) language (but not mindminded language about other people) to 6-month-olds predicted children’s false belief performance at age 4 (Meins et al. 2002).”
Theory of Mind and Neurodevelopmental Disorders of Childhood (2011, positive): “Appropriate use of personal pronouns “I” and “you” or frequent use of “think” and “know,” stimulate children to do better later at ToM tasks (39).”
Mind-mindedness in children: Individual differences in internal-state talk in middle childhood (2006, background): “…Journal of Developmental Psychology (2006), 24, 181–196 q 2006 The British Psychological Society www.bpsjournals.co.uk DOI:10.1348/026151005X80174 Meins et al. (2002) reported a link between superior ToM performance between 45 and 48 months and maternal mind-mindedness at age 6 months.”
Longitudinal change and longitudinal stability of individual differences in children's emotion understanding (2005, background): “In addition, the quality of the attachment relationship between preschool children and their caretaker and the nature and quality of family discourse about emotions also appear to have an influence on children's emotion understanding (e.g., de Rosnay, Pons, Harris, & Morrell, 2004; Harris, 1994, 199”