Effects of maternal mind-mindedness on mothers' behaviors to infants and the development of 9-month-olds' joint attention

Abstract

The present study focused on maternal mind-mindedness (MM), that is, the tendency to treat an infant as an individual with a mind. The individual differences in maternal MM were measured when their infants were six-month-old. Three months after the measurement of MM, the effects of MM to maternal behaviors to nine-month-old infants were investigated (N=38). The result suggested that mothers who had high MM commented more on the infants; mental state in there interactions. However, any relations were not found among MM and maternal behaviors to share attention with infants. Secondly, nine-month-old infants' development of joint attention were assessed. It is shown that the content of MM, but not the frequency of MM, related to infants' abilities to follow the experimenter1s pointing. The infants whose mother often read cognitive and some other internal states from infants showed higher joint attention abilities than infants whose mothers tended to focus on infants' feeling and desire. I discussed effects of MM on children's development of mind understanding via daily mother-infant interactions