title: Collaborative Mother-Toddler Communication and Theory of Mind Development at Age 4.
abstract: Focusing on social pragmatics, this longitudinal study investigated the contribution of mother-toddler collaborative communication to theory of mind (ToM) development at age 4. At age 2½, 78 toddlers' (42 boys) and their mothers were observed during pretend play. At age 4, children were tested using 4 false belief understanding tasks. Both mothers and toddlers engaged in more collaborative (inform,guide/request, andsupport/confirm) than non-collaborative communication acts. Other-focused collaborative acts ofsupport/confirmby mothers and toddlers predicted children's false belief understanding, even after controlling for 5 covariates. In addition, asactiveagents in their own ToM development, the contribution of toddlers' collaborative acts to false belief understanding was independent of their mothers. Finally, the way toddlers and their mothersco-constructingtheir communication mattered. Only when toddlers engaged in high levels of collaborative acts, the mothers' high levels of collaborative acts demonstrated a positive effect on children's ToM development. The applied implications of these findings were discussed.
authors.affiliation: Department of Child Psychology and Education, Sungkyunkwan University, 25-2 Sungkyunkwan-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul, South Korea.
authors.forename: Jihyun
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Sung
authors.affiliation: Department of Human Development and Family Science, University of Georgia, 403 Sanford Dr, Athens, GA, U.S.A.
authors.forename: Hui-Chin
authors.initials: HC
authors.lastname: Hsu
keywords: collaborative communication acts; mother-child pretend play; social pragmatics; theory of mind