Exposure to behavioral regularities in everyday life predicts infants’ acquisition of mental state vocabulary

There are two broad views of children's theory of mind. The mentalist view is that it emerges in infancy and is possibly innate. The minimalist view is that it emerges more gradually in childhood and is heavily dependent on learning. According to minimalism, children initially understand behaviors rather than mental states, and they are assisted in doing so by recognizing repeating patterns in behavior. The regularities in behavior allow them to predict future behaviors, succeed on theory-of-mind tasks, acquire mental state words, and eventually, understand the mental states underlying behavior. The present study provided the first clear evidence for the plausibility of this view by fitting head cameras to 54 infants aged 6 to 25 months, and recording their view of the world in their daily lives. At 6 and 12 months, infants viewed an average of 146.5 repeated behaviors per hour, a rate consistent with approximately 560,000 repetitions in their first year, and with repetitions correlating with children's acquisition of mental state words, even after controlling for their general vocabulary and a range of variables indexing social interaction. We also recorded infants’ view of people searching or searching for and retrieving objects. These were 92 times less common and did not correlate with mental state vocabulary. Overall, the findings indicate that repeated behaviors provide a rich source of information for children that would readily allow them to recognize patterns in behavior and help them acquire mental state words, providing the first clear evidence for this claim of minimalism.

Research Highlights

• Six- to 25-month-olds wore head cameras to record home life from infants’ point-of-view and help adjudicate between nativist and minimalist views of theory-of-mind (ToM).
• Nativists say ToM is too early developing to enable learning, whereas minimalists say infants learn to predict behaviors from behavior patterns in environment.
• Consistent with minimalism, infants had an incredibly rich exposure (146.5/h, >560,000 in first year) to repeated behaviors (e.g., drinking from a cup repeatedly).
• Consistent with minimalism, more repeated behaviors correlated with infants’ mental state vocabulary, even after controlling for gender, age, searches witnessed and non-mental state vocabulary.

     

When two are a family: looking backward and looking forward in a group intervention with single‐by‐choice mothers

Objective: We describe a preventive short‐term group intervention with nine single‐by‐choice (SBC) mothers to provide maximal support for parental functioning and to minimize possible emotional and/or developmental difficulties in their children. Method: Dynamically oriented group work (fifteen one‐and‐a‐half‐hour sessions) focused on: elaboration of painful experiences in the peri‐natal period; reducing stress, tension and guilt; helping mothers with problematic aspects of parenting through work on parental self‐image and perceptions of the child and the dyadic interaction; and strengthening their acceptance of the chosen family model. Results: Therapeutic gains described by mothers and facilitators include: reduced tension, anxiety and guilt; improved integration of the mother's parental self‐image and perception of the child; reduced ambivalence in dyadic relationships; strengthening the mother's fantasized triadic relationships; better acceptance of chosen family pattern; mothers' willingness to tell children their birth story. Conclusion: Dynamically oriented preventive group intervention with SBC mothers can identify potential psychological risk factors and help mothers with sensitive aspects of parenting.