Parental mental state talk in two contexts: Parents’ cognitive sentential complements are positively associated with children’s theory of mind

Abstract

The present study aimed to systematically examine the specific roles of parents’ cognitive mental state terms and sentential complements on 3- to 5-year-olds’ theory of mind (ToM), since cognitive mental state terms and sentential complements often co-occur in parental language. We coded for parents’ cognitive complements, non-cognitive complements, and cognitive terms without complements in two contexts: teaching (Study 1; n = 89) and storybook reading (Study 2; n = 84). Multilevel logistic regressions showed that parents’ cognitive complements were positively related to children’s ToM, while neither non-cognitive complements nor cognitive non-complements had significant associations. This suggests that cognitive mental state terms and sentential complements found in parent-child conversation play a joint role in promoting children’s ToM; however, neither is sufficient per se. These results are in line with social constructivism and provide converging evidence that parental language input is indeed positively associated with children’s socio-cognitive skills.