Slaughter Virginia, Peterson Candida C, Mackintosh Emily
University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
Child Dev. 2007 May-Jun;78(3):839-58. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2007.01036.x.
In 2 studies mothers read wordless storybooks to their preschool-aged children; narratives were analyzed for mental state language. Children's theory-of-mind understanding (ToM) was concurrently assessed. In Study 1, children's (N=30; M age 3 years 9 months) ToM task performance was significantly correlated with mothers' explanatory, causal, and contrastive talk about cognition, but not with mothers' simple mentions of cognition. In Study 2, the same pattern was found in an older sample of typically developing children (N=24; M age 4 years 7 months), whereas for children on the autism spectrum (N=24; M age 6 years 7.5 months), ToM task performance was uniquely correlated with mothers' explanatory, causal, and contrastive talk about emotions.
在两项研究中，母亲们给学龄前儿童阅读无字故事书；对故事中的叙述进行心理状态语言分析。同时评估了儿童的心理理论理解能力（ToM）。在研究1中，儿童（N = 30；平均年龄3岁9个月）的ToM任务表现与母亲关于认知的解释性、因果性和对比性谈话显著相关，但与母亲对认知的简单提及无关。在研究2中，在一个年龄稍大的典型发育儿童样本（N = 24；平均年龄4岁7个月）中也发现了相同的模式，而对于自闭症谱系儿童（N = 24；平均年龄6岁7.5个月），ToM任务表现仅与母亲关于情绪的解释性、因果性和对比性谈话相关。
