Talking about other's mind: does maternal mental state talk differ depending on the characteristics of the other?

Abstract

The current study investigated whether mothers adjusted their mental state talk frequencies in response to contextual factors of the target (cultural identity, age group). Using a mixed-design, 162 Turkish mothers (M = 40.10 years, SD = 5.93) and their children (M = 10.09 years, SD = 1.37; 81 boys) participated in the study in 2021. We tested whether mothers would use more mental state terms when describing protagonists in their ingroup compared to their outgroup. Mothers referred to the mental states of the adults in their ingroups more than to outgroup protagonists; this difference was not found when referring to children. This study presents an important step toward understanding how mental state talk could differ depending on the target's characteristics.