LE3 .A278 2009

2009

Symons, Doug

Acadia University

Bachelor of Science

Honours

Psychology

Psychology

The present study examined children's use of mental state (MS) language during a controlled social interaction in which they read a children's book with a doll surrogate. Participants were 22 children who interacted with a doll whose verbal feedback was provided by an experimenter to contain either mental state references or no such references. Contrary to expectations, these two kinds of social behavior did not have an impact on the child's own use of mental state language when reading to the doll. In addition, child security was measured using a self-report security measure and a narrative task in which children answered questions about a child pain experience, and they also completed an emotional labeling task. There was a significant negative relation between the total number of MS words uttered by the participant and emotional labeling as well as family socioeconomic status. However, there was no evidence of systematic relations between children's attachment style and any of the joint reading measures.

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https://scholar.acadiau.ca/islandora/object/theses:604