title: Child and mother mental-state talk in shared pretense as predictors of children's social symbolic play abilities at age 3.
abstract: This study investigated relations between mother and child (N=49) mental-state talk during shared pretense and children's social symbolic play at age 3. Social symbolic play was not related to mothers' mental-state talk. In contrast, children's own use of desire-state talk in shared pretense was a better predictor of social symbolic play than their general use of mental-state talk, even after accounting for general verbal ability as well as mothers' use of desires terms.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  These results highlight for the first time a link between children's references to desires and their performance on social symbolic play at age 3 years - a social cognitive ability thought to precede theory of mind.
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, University of Minho, Braga, Portugal.
authors.forename: Ana
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Osório
authors.forename: Elizabeth
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Meins
authors.forename: Carla
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Martins
authors.forename: Eva Costa
authors.initials: EC
authors.lastname: Martins
authors.forename: Isabel
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Soares
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007092:Imagination; D008297:Male; D009034:Mother-Child Relations; D010988:Play and Playthings; D012919:Social Behavior; D013060:Speech; D056345:Theory of Mind