MOTHER AND INFANT TALK ABOUT MENTAL STATES: SYSTEMIC EMERGENCE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL LEXICON AND THEORY OF MIND UNDERSTANDING

In recent years, a number of studies that have examined how social experiences are related to children's theory of mind development, have found that: (I) the frequency of mothers' mental State utterances used in mother-child picture-book reading, is correlated with children's theory of mind abilities; (2) mothers' use of cognitive terms is related more strongly to children's theory of mind performances than the mothers' references to other mental states, such as desires or emotions (Adrian, Clemente, Villanueva, Rieffe, 2005; Ruffman, Slade, Crowe, 2002; Taumoepeau, Ruffman, 2006; Dunn, 2002). Despite the evidence for the role of mothers' language, there is disagreement over how exactly it improves children's theory (if mind development. In short, mentalistic comments contain distinctive words, grammatical constructions and pragmatic features. The question is, however, which factor is critical We Rosnay, Pons, Harris, Morrell, 2004).