Furrow D, Moore C, Davidge J, Chiasson L
Department of Psychology, Mount Saint Vincent University, Halifax, NS, Canada.
J Child Lang. 1992 Oct;19(3):617-31. doi: 10.1017/s0305000900011594.
In this study, mental terms in mothers' and their children's speech at two and three years of age were studied in order to examine the relationships between maternal and child use. Nineteen mother and child dyads were videotaped for one hour on each of two days when the children were 2;0 and again for two one-hour sessions on separate days when they were 3;0, and mental terms were noted. The utterances in which mental terms were used were coded for function. Results supported the existing picture of children's mental term use. Few terms appeared at 2;0, but many were used at 3;0 with think and know predominating. Mental terms occurred more commonly in utterances used to regulate the interaction between the participants than in utterances referring to mental states. Children's mental term use mirrored that of their mothers. Further, mothers' use of mental terms for particular functions when their children were 2;0 predicted their children's use at 3;0. While allowing no conclusions about causation, our findings suggest that the development of mental state language, and thus presumably a theory of mind, is fostered by the linguistic environment. Specifically, it is argued that the tendency of mothers to focus their children's attention on mental processes by talking about them and, more importantly, by using utterance types which conceivably direct the children to reflect on their own mental states, is associated with children's use of mental terms.
在本研究中，对母亲及其孩子在两岁和三岁时言语中的心理术语进行了研究，以检验母亲和孩子使用心理术语之间的关系。19对母婴在孩子2岁时的两天里，每天被录像一小时；孩子3岁时，又在不同的两天里进行了两次一小时的录像，并记录了心理术语。对使用心理术语的话语进行了功能编码。结果支持了关于儿童使用心理术语的现有情况。2岁时出现的心理术语很少，但3岁时使用了很多，其中“思考”和“知道”占主导地位。心理术语在用于调节参与者之间互动的话语中比在提及心理状态的话语中更常见。儿童使用心理术语的情况反映了他们母亲的情况。此外，母亲在孩子2岁时对特定功能使用心理术语的情况，预测了孩子在3岁时的使用情况。虽然无法得出因果关系的结论，但我们的研究结果表明，语言环境促进了心理状态语言的发展，因此大概也促进了心理理论的发展。具体来说，有人认为，母亲通过谈论心理过程，更重要的是通过使用可能引导孩子反思自己心理状态的话语类型，将孩子的注意力集中在心理过程上的倾向，与孩子使用心理术语有关。
