The Relation of Children's Mental State Talk to Family Characteristics and the Mental State Talk of Their Parents

The aim of this research was to investigate the correlations of mental talk in children aged 17 to 37 months and some family characteristics: the socio-economic status, parents' education, the number of siblings and parents mental talk. The participants were 106 children and one of their parents. We collected speech samples for children and their parents to analyze their mental state talk about desires, thoughts and emotions. Other data were collected from one of the parents through a questionnaire. The results show that the parents of children who had more mental state of desire talk, talked more about desires and about thoughts as well, but not about emotions. Furthermore, parents whose children had at least one mental state of desire utterance talked significantly more about desires and thoughts than parents whose children had no such utterances. There were no significant correlations between children's mental state talk about desires and other family variables. The results point to the importance of studying family characteristics in relation to children's mental state talk, which is considered an indicator of theory of mind development.