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Thinking or feeling? An exploratory study of maternal scaffolding, child mental state talk and emotion understanding in language-impaired and typically-developing school-aged children

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posted on 2023-06-09, 08:23 authored by Nicola YuillNicola Yuill, Sarah Little
Background Mother–child mental state talk (MST) supports children's developing social–emotional understanding. In typically developing (TD) children, family conversations about emotion, cognition, and causes have been linked to children's emotion understanding. Specific language impairment (SLI) may compromise developing emotion understanding and adjustment. Aims We investigated emotion understanding in children with SLI and TD, in relation to mother–child conversation. Specifically, is cognitive, emotion, or causal MST more important for child emotion understanding and how might maternal scaffolding support this? Sample Nine 5- to 9-year-old children with SLI and nine age-matched typically developing (TD) children, and their mothers. Method We assessed children's language, emotion understanding and reported behavioural adjustment. Mother–child conversations were coded for MST, including emotion, cognition, and causal talk, and for scaffolding of causal talk. Results Children with SLI scored lower than TD children on emotion understanding and adjustment. Mothers in each group provided similar amounts of cognitive, emotion, and causal talk, but SLI children used proportionally less cognitive and causal talk than TD children did, and more such child talk predicted better child emotion understanding. Child emotion talk did not differ between groups and did not predict emotion understanding. Both groups participated in maternal-scaffolded causal talk, but causal talk about emotion was more frequent in TD children, and such talk predicted higher emotion understanding. Conclusions Cognitive and causal language scaffolded by mothers provides tools for articulating increasingly complex ideas about emotion, predicting children's emotion understanding. Our study provides a robust method for studying scaffolding processes for understanding causes of emotion.

History

Publication status

  • Published

File Version

  • Accepted version

Journal

British Journal of Educational Psychology

ISSN

0007-0998

Publisher

Wiley

Issue

2

Volume

88

Page range

261-283

Department affiliated with

  • Psychology Publications

Research groups affiliated with

  • Centre for Innovation and Research in Childhood and Youth Publications

Full text available

  • Yes

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2018-10-25

First Open Access (FOA) Date

2018-10-25

First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date

2018-10-24

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