Researchers at the University of Sussex found that children whose mothers talked to them about people's feelings, beliefs, wants and intentions, particularly between the ages of three and five, developed better social understanding than children whose mothers did not offer information about people's mental states.
The study, 'The Relation Between Parenting, Children's Social Understanding and Language', was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.
It followed children aged three to 12, measuring their social understanding using interviews, questionnaires, assessments of social understanding, observation of mental state and talk between mothers and children.
In one part of the study researchers observed how mothers talked to their children at three years of age as they looked at a series of pictures together. They found that children whose mothers had often described the emotions of the people in the pictures did particularly well on social understanding tasks.
Another task used clips from TV comedy 'The Office' to observe how children aged eight to 12 reacted to character David Brent's embarrassing faux pas. From the age of eight children started to cringe at his behaviour, and by age 12 could be as socially sophisticated as adults, the study said.
However, the study also found the children who had the most sophisticated social understanding exhibited the most negative behaviour towards their mother.
Dr Nicola Yuill, who led the later stages of the research, said, 'It would be really interesting to work with people who run family learning programmes to explore whether teaching parents how to use "mental state talk" has a beneficial effect on their children's social understanding.'
FURTHER INFORMATION
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