Mind-mindedness and theory of mind: mediating role of language and perspectival symbolic play

Relations among indices of maternal mind-mindedness (appropriate and nonattuned mind-related comments) and children’s: (a) internal state vocabulary and perspectival symbolic play at 26 months (N = 206), and (b) theory of mind (ToM) at 51 months (n = 161) were investigated. Appropriate comments were positively asso-ciated with ToM, but were unrelated to internal state language and perspectival symbolic play. Nonattuned comments were negatively correlated with internal state language and perspectival symbolic play, but were unrelated to ToM. Path analyses indicated that the best fit model assumed: (a) indirect links between nonat-tuned comments and ToM via children’s perspectival symbolic play, (b) a direct link between appropriate comments and ToM, and (c) an indirect link between appropriate comments and ToM via children’s concur-rent receptive verbal ability. There is now an established literature on social-and interpersonal-related individual differences in children’s understanding of mind. In the two dec-ades since Dunn, Brown, Slomkowski, Tesla, and Youngblade (1991) first highlighted how children’s family-based exposure to internal state talk relates to their later theory of mind (ToM) performance, studies have continued to investigate relations between caregivers ’ use of internal state language and children’s understanding of mind (e.g., Ruff