Assoc. Prof. Dr. Hande Ilgaz from Bilkent University will virtually visit our lab on March 30th and give a speech titled "More Than Words: Maternal Mental State Talk in Repeated Storytellings as a Form of Dynamic Scaffolding That Supports Social-Cognitive Development". Please contact lcd@metu.edu.tr 

Abstract:

In this talk, I will present findings of a longitudinal study investigating the relation between maternal Mental State (MS) language and children's false belief understanding (FBU). One hundred and twenty-six mothers narrated a wordless storybook twice, with one week delay, to their 3- to 5-year-old children. Children completed false belief, language, and executive function tasks. One year later, 81 mothers narrated a different wordless storybook to their children twice with one week between storytelling sessions. Mothers' talk was analyzed at two levels of inclusivity. The comprehensive coding included all MS categories (i.e., perception, physiological, motivation, desire, affect, and cognition). The traditional or narrow coding included only the most frequently coded categories (i.e., cognition, affect, desire). In both analyses, all MS expressions were coded according to the referent (i.e., child/mother vs. story character). Finally, the consistency versus change between the two storytelling sessions at each time point was explored. The results will be discussed from a socio-cultural framework supporting the conceptualization of maternal MS language as constituting dynamic and complementary forms of scaffolding for children's socio-cognitive development.