Journal article
Children’s theory of mind as a mechanism linking parents’ mind-mindedness in infancy with children’s conscience
Journal of experimental child psychology, Vol.193, pp.104784-104784
05/2020
DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2019.104784
PMCID: PMC7075672
PMID: 31991261
Abstract
•Mothers’ mind-minded comments to infants predicted child conscience 6 years later.•Child conscience encompassed post-transgression discomfort and prosocial cognitions.•Children’s theory of mind at preschool age mediated the relation.•The relation was found only for the mind-minded comments during snack, not play.•There were no findings for fathers’ mind-minded comments to infants.
Growing research on parental mind-mindedness has revealed significant positive associations between parents’ appropriate mind-minded (MM) comments to their infants and children’s future theory of mind (ToM). In turn, ToM has been broadly linked with a range of social-moral competencies. However, few (if any) studies have examined long-term paths from mothers’ and fathers’ mind-mindedness in infancy to conscience at early school age, with ToM serving as a mediator of those links. We tested such a model in a prospective longitudinal study of 102 community infants, mothers, and fathers. Parents’ MM comments to their infants were coded in naturalistic interactions in snack and play contexts at 7 months. Children’s ToM was assessed in false-belief tasks at 4.5 and 5.5 years, and two aspects of their conscience were assessed at 6.5 years: discomfort following transgressions and prosocial judgments in hypothetical moral dilemmas. We tested our model in a comprehensive path analysis that accounted for developmental continuity of both aspects of conscience. Children’s ToM was positively associated with both measures of future conscience. The long-term paths from parental mind-mindedness in infancy to conscience were found for mother–child relationships only. For mothers and children, we supported the paths from maternal appropriate MM comments during a snack context in infancy to both aspects of children’s conscience mediated by children’s ToM. The findings extend earlier evidence suggesting the potentially important role of the parent–child interactive context for long-term effects of early parental mind-mindedness and highlight differences in the roles MM comments may play in mother–child and father–child relationships.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Children’s theory of mind as a mechanism linking parents’ mind-mindedness in infancy with children’s conscience
- Creators
- Kathryn C Goffin - Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242, USAGrazyna Kochanska - Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242, USAJeung Eun Yoon - Kennedy Krieger Institute, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Journal of experimental child psychology, Vol.193, pp.104784-104784
- DOI
- 10.1016/j.jecp.2019.104784
- PMID
- 31991261
- PMCID
- PMC7075672
- NLM abbreviation
- J Exp Child Psychol
- ISSN
- 0022-0965
- eISSN
- 1096-0457
- Publisher
- Elsevier Inc
- Grant note
- DOI: 10.13039/100000025, name: National Institute of Mental Health, award: R01 MH63096, K02 MH01446; DOI: 10.13039/100000071, name: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, award: R01 HD069171, R01 HD091047
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 05/2020
- Academic Unit
- Psychological and Brain Sciences
- Record Identifier
- 9984213280202771
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