The Development of Social Cognition: Preschoolers' Use of Mental State Talk in Peer Conflicts

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The Development of Social Cognition:Preschoolers' Use of Mental State Talk inPeer ConflictsLisa Comparini a , Edith M. Douglas a & Sara N. Perez aa Psychology & Sociology , Texas A&M University–Corpus ChristiPublished online: 19 Jun 2014.

To cite this article: Lisa Comparini , Edith M. Douglas & Sara N. Perez (2014) The Developmentof Social Cognition: Preschoolers' Use of Mental State Talk in Peer Conflicts, Early Education andDevelopment, 25:7, 1083-1101, DOI: 10.1080/10409289.2014.896770

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The Development of Social Cognition: Preschoolers’Use of Mental State Talk in Peer Conflicts

Lisa Comparini, Edith M. Douglas, and Sara N. Perez

Psychology & Sociology, Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi

Research Findings: This research examines preschoolers’ use of mental state terms in naturally

occurring peer conflicts in the classroom to determine how children use mental state terms for

organizing their social interactions. Analyses focus on the types, frequencies, and social interactive

functions of mental state terms. Utterances (N¼ 166) with mental state terms from 124 conflict epi-

sodes were analyzed. Children used a number of different mental state terms, want and need being

the most frequently used, to index their own and their interlocutors’ desires for subtle interactive

purposes. Want was paired most often with bids for action, objects, inclusion in a play area, or clari-

fication of another child’s mental state. Need was most often used when directing the other child’s

action or attention, to justify, clarify, or insist on their own action or previous request. Practice orPolicy: Findings suggest that children’s peer conflicts constitute a rich setting for the active construc-

tion of social relationships through the use of utterances with mental state language. This emphasis

on peer interactions has the potential to inform new ways of supporting children’s self–other devel-

opment as a foundation for academic success.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF PERSPECTIVE TAKING AS SOCIAL COGNITION

During the preschool years, a child’s understanding of the mental states (feelings, beliefs, etc.) of

others develops such that he or she becomes increasingly able to take the perspective of another

person. The young child’s ‘‘egocentrism,’’ as described by Piaget (1965), gives way to a grow-

ing understanding of others’ mental states as different from their own and as causally connected

to behaviors (P. H. Miller & Aloise, 1989; Olson, Astington, & Harris, 1988). For some, the key

ability that underlies this development is a cognitive representational skill (Wimmer & Perner,

1983), namely, the ability to represent the relationship between two or more people’s epistemic

states. This skill emerges and becomes established between ages 4 and 6, when children become

increasingly capable of imagining another’s perspective (even if it is different from their own),

come to understand that others can have mistaken beliefs, and even come to understand that they

themselves can have false beliefs (Bartsch & Wellman, 1995).

The ability to understand false beliefs was once at the center of research on children’s

understanding of mind and has been reliably measured using the now classic false belief task

Correspondence regarding this article should be addressed to Lisa Comparini, PhD, Psychology & Sociology, Texas

A&M University–Corpus Christi, 6300 Ocean Drive, U-5827, Corpus Christi, TX 78412. E-mail: lisa.comparini@

tamucc.edu

Early Education and Development, 25: 1083–1101

Copyright # 2014 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

ISSN: 1040-9289 print/1556-6935 online

DOI: 10.1080/10409289.2014.896770

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(Wimmer & Perner, 1983). A rather robust finding is that children younger than the age of 4

years tend to fail this false belief task, but between 4 and 6 years of age, most are able to pass

it (Wellman, Cross, & Watson, 2001; Wimmer & Perner, 1983).

When the experimental task is altered in such a way that it is not an essentially verbal task,

however, children as young as 15 months of age show evidence of an implicit theory of mind

(Onishi & Baillargeon, 2005). Among a group of children ranging in age from 2;11 to 4;5 years,

90% correctly looked at the location in which a protagonist would think that an object was

hidden even though only 45% of them could give accurate verbal responses to the same task

(Clements & Perner, 1994). Still unable to correctly answer questions about the location of

an object from the point of view of another whose belief about the location of the object was

different from their own, they nevertheless seemed to understand that others’ behaviors can

be explained by their (others’) mental states (e.g., goals, perceptions, beliefs) and that such

mental states of others might not mirror reality (Onishi & Baillargeon, 2005).

Measuring Early Social-Cognitive Development in Everyday Social Interactions

In order to capture the developmental process that leads children to be able to pass the false

belief task, some have taken the position that perspective taking, as a form of social understand-

ing, is rooted in interpersonal activity and that children learn about their own minds through

everyday social interaction with others (Carpendale & Lewis, 2004; Carpendale, Lewis, Muller,

& Racine, 2005; Montgomery, 2005). This is in keeping with a broader sociocultural approach

(Vygotsky, 1978) in which development is said not only to take place in social contexts but to be

an essentially social process (Cole, 1992; Rogoff, 1993, 1996; Rogoff, & Lave, 1984; Wertsch,

1985, 1991). When this sociocultural approach is carried through to the development of social

cognition, children are not said to learn about mental states through primarily cognitive pro-

cesses such as inference, introspection, or analogical reasoning. Rather, beliefs, intentions,

and desires are ‘‘aspects of human activity’’ that are ‘‘tied up with our way of acting in the

world’’ (Carpendale et al., 2005, p. 352).

Social-cognitive development can then be said to include early developmental milestones

occurring as early as 9 months of age, long before children are able to pass the false belief task.

For example, the ability to establish joint attention, including gaze following and pointing

gestures used to make requests or direct others’ attention, is an important milestone in the devel-

opment of an awareness of others’ perspectives. Indeed, these naturally occurring parent–child

interactions are correlated with later social development measures, including performance on false

belief tasks (Carpendale et al., 2005; Carpenter, Nagell, & Tomasello, 1998; Charman et al., 2000).

Others have also found it useful to examine children’s understanding of mental states through

their spontaneous use of mental state talk (MST) in naturally occurring social interactions. C. A.

Miller (2006), who also identified joint attention in infancy as a possible precursor to the under-

standing of mental states, considered the early use of mental state terms indicative of developing

perspective-taking skills. Around the age of 3, children begin to use mental verbs such as know,think, and want in reference to their own and others’ mental states (Shatz, Wellman, & Silber,

1983), and by 47 months of age, the total frequency of MST used by children is significantly

correlated with successful performance on the standard false belief task (Brown, Donelan-

McCall, & Dunn, 1996). Furthermore, early talk about mental states seems to follow an orderly

1084 COMPARINI, DOUGLAS, AND PEREZ

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developmental trajectory. In one study, children’s references to volition (e.g., want, need), physi-

ology (e.g., tired, hungry), and perception (e.g., see, look) were highest, whereas talk of affect

(e.g., happy, sad) and moral judgment=obligation (e.g., good, bad) was significantly lower and

talk of cognitive states (e.g., know, think) was the lowest (Bretherton & Beeghly, 1982). Simi-

larly, Wellman and Liu (2004) found that between the ages of 3 and 5 children progress from an

understanding of contrasting desires to an understanding of contrasting beliefs, contrasting

knowledge, and finally mistaken beliefs.

Collectively, this work represents a widening of the domain of relevant developmental

accomplishments from the circumscribed ability to pass a false belief task around age 4–6 to

an array of social and cognitive developments that take place as early as the first year of life.

Social activities such as pointing and talking about mental states are then an indicator of chil-

dren’s budding social cognition and obtain their meaning from how they are used in patterns

of human activity and how they are intimately connected with ongoing social interactions. This

leads to a parallel shift from an emphasis on primarily cognitive processes that reside in the head,

and can therefore only be studied indirectly, to social processes that are fundamentally interac-

tional and observable (Carpendale et al., 2005, p. 353). Even in the case in which the standard

false belief task is modified to require only nonverbal responses (Clements & Perner, 1994;

Onishi & Baillargeon, 2005), we note that the task is modified in such a way that infants’ suc-

cessful completion of the trials not only rests on a different kind of response (nonverbal rather

than verbal) but also provides children with a more interactive experience. In both studies, the

standard methodology in which children are asked to reason about a story from the perspective

of an outsider is replaced with an alternative presentation of the stimulus in which the child par-

ticipates more directly. In the case of 15-month-old infants (Onishi & Baillargeon, 2005), the

experimental trials involve face-to-face interaction with a real-life interactant rather than a

third-person story protagonist, and the 15-month-olds are prompted by a first-person statement

asked by the experimenter (‘‘I wonder where he’s going to look’’ and ‘‘I wonder where she will

look?’’). In the case of 2- to 4-year-olds (Clements & Perner, 1994), the researchers animate

cardboard cutouts of characters (mice named Sam and Katie) to whom the children are intro-

duced. In both cases, it could be argued that the children’s involvement as observers, over-

hearers, and interactants in the experimental conditions supports their emerging understanding

of others’ mental states in a way that a third-person story might not.

Social Interaction With Caregivers and the Special Role of Language

In keeping with the view that social-cognitive development is a primarily social process, many

researchers have turned their attention to the different social influences that children experience.

Mother–child interactions and maternal use of MST, for instance, have been examined in several

ways, indicating a positive connection with children’s use of MST and their performance on

theory of mind tasks. Children whose mothers used more MST at earlier time points scored

higher on theory of mind tests that included scores for desire, belief, and emotion understanding

(Ruffman, Slade, & Crowe, 2002), and children whose mothers engaged in conversations about

feelings and emotions performed better on tests of emotion understanding (Denham, Renwick-

DeBardi, & Hewes, 1994; Dunn, Brown, Slomkowski, Tesla, & Youngblade, 1991). Further-

more, when describing pictures to their 15-month olds, mothers’ reference to their children’s

MENTAL STATE TALK IN PEER CONFLICTS 1085

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desires predicted those children’s use of mental state language when they were 24 months old

(Taumoepeau & Ruffman, 2006), and mothers’ references to others’ desires when the children

were 24 months old predicted those children’s use of mental state language at 33 months

(Taumoepeau & Ruffman, 2008).

Other discourse characteristics of mother–child conversations have also been found to play a

role in children’s understanding of emotions. Mothers’ use of questions and single-clause utter-

ances with mental state verbs positively predicted their children’s mental verb and false belief

performance (Howard, Mayeaux, & Naigles, 2008). Mothers who engaged in elaborate conver-

sations, explaining emotions, providing justifications, including discourse about past events in

their discussions about emotions, and using causal discourse about emotions, had children

whose scores on social cognition were higher (Brown et al., 1996; Denham, Zoller, &

Couchoud, 1994; Dunn & Brown, 1993; Dunn et al., 1991; Laible, 2004; Taumoepeau & Reese,

2013).

Meins, Fernyhough, Russell, and Clark-Carter (1998) and Meins et al. (2002) also noted the

positive relationship between maternal mind-mindedness and children’s sociocognitive under-

standing. Measures of mind-mindedness capture how accurate or appropriate mothers’ verbal

identification of mental states is in infant–mother interactions. The focus is on maternal relation-

ship quality, including the mother’s attitudes or beliefs about her infant, and ‘‘on the caregiver’s

willingness or ability to read the child’s behaviour with reference to the likely internal states that

might be governing it’’ (Meins & Fernyhough, 2010, p. 2). Extending this work to the role of

fathers, Lundy (2013) also noted that paternal mind-mindedness is also positively correlated

with preschoolers’ performance on theory of mind tasks. In all of these cases, the quality of par-

ental discourse about the mind is taken to be relevant to the child’s sociocognitive development

even when the infant is preverbal (e.g., as early as 6 months old). Not unlike the work of others

who have identified joint attention and pointing (Carpendale et al., 2005) as early perspective-

taking skills occurring before the first birthday, early and stable measures of mothers’ mind-

minded discourse are said to reflect a general approach to thinking about and interacting with

their children, contributing to children’s developing social cognition beginning in infancy.

An Indexical Approach to MST

Although the work on mind-mindedness is primarily focused on the parent–child relationship, it

can be argued that mind-mindedness is a primarily discourse-based measure insofar as the con-

tent of parent–child discourse is taken to be a window of sorts into parents’ attitudes about their

infants (Budwig, 2000; Budwig & Wiley, 1995). Whereas the work cited previously considers

the content of the language input, largely in terms of the parents’ references to mental states, and

the relationship between language used in interaction and the quality of the parent–child relation-

ship, de Villiers (2005) argued that children’s false belief understanding depends not on the care-

giver’s use of mental state terms but more specifically on the caregiver’s use of mental state

terms in connection with a very specific grammatical structure: sentential complements, in which

a sentence takes a full clause as its object complement (e.g., ‘‘Do you know where the ball is?’’).

The findings suggest that experience with the logical structure of embedded clauses is a form of

perspective taking that ‘‘uniquely provide(s) the means for discussing contradictions between

mental states and reality’’ (Hale & Tager-Flusberg, 2003, p. 348) and is a necessary condition


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for the acquisition of theory of mind (de Villiers, 2000). In a training study designed to further

capture this phenomenon, Lohmann and Tomasello (2003) found that training in sentential

complement structure, even without mental state discourse, was sufficient to facilitate false

belief understanding. This suggests that although the content of what children hear is clearly

important, the linguistic form of what is said may also contribute an important cognitive compo-

nent to the role that social interaction plays in promoting the development of social cognition.

Shifting the focus, however, from the development of perspective taking as a cognitively dri-

ven process (development occurs as a result of a child’s successful and correct reasoning about

the relationship between subjective mental states and actions or in relation to the syntactic struc-

tures experienced in the linguistic input) to the use of MST as a form of social action leads to a

related shift in one’s view of language and its role in studying the development of social cog-

nition. Budwig (2002) explained that one view of language presupposes a symbolic system in

which words reference internal states of the speaker, insofar as they are a verbal representation

of what the speaker is thinking or feeling. A contrasting view of language, one that conceptua-

lizes language as a form of social action, instead takes an indexical approach. Rather than repre-

senting what is in the head (e.g., one’s own feeling or belief, a set of beliefs about children, the

logic represented by sentential complement structure), language forms are taken to index salient

and recurring social events. What is being acquired is not a set of logical operations for under-

standing others’ minds or the structure of false belief but a facility with acting in the social world

in ways that include the use of socially relevant language. This understanding of the relationship

between meaning and form applies more broadly as an explanation for how children develop not

only mental state terms but other linguistic, including syntactic, forms. In this way, a language

socialization approach such as that proposed by Ochs and Schieffelin (2006) makes the relevant

connection between language and culturally organized situations existing as forms of social

action and interaction rather than between language and subjective mental states:

This approach rests on the assumption that, in every community, grammatical forms are inextricably

tied to, and hence index, culturally organized situations of use and that the indexical meanings of

grammatical forms influence children’s production and understanding of these forms. (pp. 168–169)

This indexical view has implications for the study of mental state terms that involve going

beyond an examination of the frequency of mental state terms used by children, or the specific

subjective events they might represent, taking into account the different communicative contexts

(Carmiol & Vinden, 2013; Matthews, Lieven, Theakson, & Tomasello, 2006) and functions

these terms may have over the course of development (Budwig, 2002). In addition, when one

takes into consideration the important role of perspective taking in the development of social

cognition, it is important to consider not only who uses mental state terms but whose mental

states these terms index and how the use of mental state terms serves particular social interactive

functions.

Looking closely at one particular form, the mental state term want, Budwig (2002) found

that children’s (18- to 36-month-olds’) and caregivers’ use of the word had similar semantic

features in that they both used want to reference the child’s desires. She also found, however,

that the children’s and caregivers’ desire talk had different interactive functions. The majority

of children’s desire talk functioned as action assertions, in which children used desire talk in

conjunction with actions that led to fulfillment of their own desires or as permission requests


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(e.g., ‘‘I want some’’). Caregivers, in contrast, rarely used action assertions; instead, the func-

tions of their desire talk were most commonly inquiries and permission requests (e.g., ‘‘You

want me to pour some?’’). A recurring pattern of linking the form want with specific interactive

functions was found for the children and for the mothers, revealing important differences in the

interactive functions of a single mental state term. In this way, how mothers and their children

indexed different social interactive functions through their differential use of the mental state

term want illuminates the social organization within which children and their mothers use MST

to take distinct and varied social perspectives on their ongoing interactions (Budwig, 2002).

Peer Conflicts and the Use of MST

In addition to findings regarding the orderly unfolding of particular mental state terms and the dif-

ferent kinds of adult discourse that facilitate social cognition, the differential use of mental state

terms by young children themselves has also been tied to the interactive context, suggesting that

whom the child interacts with is important. Piaget (1965) recognized that children in peer relation-

ships are more equal to one another and therefore have the opportunity and are able to negotiate and

cooperate with one another in ways that differ from their opportunities and abilities to do this with

more powerful adults (Bukowski, Buhrmester, & Underwood, 2011). For example, preschoolers

use more references to mental states when talking to siblings and friends than with mothers (Brown

et al., 1996), and 3- to 6-year-olds ‘‘talked about inner states (especially others’ inner states) more

often with younger siblings than with mothers’’ (Hughes, Marks, Ensor, & Lecce, 2010, p. 822).

These unique interactions with peers allow for more opportunities for ‘‘experiences of negotiation,

co-construction, and affection based on an equal footing’’ (Bukowski et al., 2011, p. 155).

Another important factor to consider when conceptualizing the role of the interactive context

has to do with the discourse setting. Conflict talk in particular has been a point of focus for many

interested in social cognition. Dunn (1996) stated,

Conflict talk is an especially useful forum for investigating children’s social understanding: Their

knowledge of social rules can, for example, be revealed in their excuses and justifications, and

their grasp of the other person’s desires, expectations, and beliefs in their attempts to conciliate

and negotiate. (p. 191)

Developmental changes in how children argue about their ongoing activities are also seen:

Toddlers are more likely to engage in conflicts about physical objects, whereas older children

(prekindergarten [preK] and kindergarten age) increasingly engage in conflicts about social

and moral issues (Ross & Conant, 1992; Wheeler, 1994). Like their use of MST, children’s con-

flicts with one another also differ from those they have with adults. In a study with American

and Italian nursery school children, the majority of peer disputes were ‘‘tied to features of

ongoing interaction and peer culture and were seldom context-independent factual or moral

questions’’ (Corsaro & Rizzo, 1990, p. 64).

The development of perspective-taking skills in particular has also been studied in connection

with peer and sibling conflicts. When examining children’s use of reasoning, for example,

researchers have found that younger siblings who use other-oriented arguments (as opposed

to self-oriented arguments or nonarguments) are more successful on false belief tasks (Foote

& Holmes-Lonergan, 2003) and that 33-month-olds who use either self-oriented or


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other-oriented arguments to reason with their siblings, but not necessarily with their mothers,

performed better on tests of perspective taking (i.e., understanding the emotions of others) than

children who did not use this kind of reasoning in disputes with their siblings (Slomkowski &

Dunn, 1992). Thus, the different structural relationships between the child and the child’s vari-

ous interactive partners have indeed been found to make a difference in the child’s use of MST

and in his or her perspective-taking skills (Brown et al., 1996; Dunn, 1993; Hartup, 1996;

Hughes et al., 2010). Taken together, these studies show that peer disputes can be viewed as

important for the development of cognitive and communicative abilities, thereby having a posi-

tive influence on the development of social knowledge (Corsaro & Rizzo, 1990; Slomkowski &

Dunn, 1992).

The Use of MST in Conflicts Between Peers

One question that arises from the work summarized here is how MST is used by peers in conflict

interactions. It seems clear that exposure to MST, and especially MST in the context of the

elaborative discourse of more developed others (primarily mothers), is associated with better

social-cognitive understanding on the part of children. It is unclear, however, how children’s

own use of MST contributes to social-cognitive development, particularly in light of the finding

that children’s own use of MST, even in unelaborated discourse contexts, is positively correlated

with their own perspective-taking skills (Garner, Jones, Gaddy, & Rennie, 1997). Even among tod-

dlers engaged in peer interactions, the use of MST in peer play is closely associated with reciprocal

play, a more advanced form of social play (Hughes, Fujisawa, Ensor, Lecce, & Marfleet, 2006).

One possibility is that exposure to MST, or to MST in the context of elaborative discourse, is

only part of what leads to more advanced social cognition and that participation in activities

with significant others in which talk of mental states is part of the ongoing moment-to-moment

activities and negotiations more fully supports social-cognitive development by scaffolding chil-

dren’s active sense making (Peskin & Astington, 2004). This is in keeping with Vygotskian

(Vygotsky, 1978) sociocultural theorists who point out that development, more generally, is

an essentially social process (Cole, 1992; Rogoff, 1993, 1996; Rogoff & Lave, 1984; Wertsch,

1985, 1991) in which ‘‘children develop their versions of the cultural meaning system as a result

of their social interaction with others’’ (Valsiner, 1987, p. 86). Applying this perspective to the

development of social cognition then leads to a revised conception of children’s use of mental

state language. From this perspective, the ability to talk about the psychological world provides

the capacity to think about and reflect on this world; the inner psychological world develops

from the outer. This then allows for further development of the ability to take the perspectives

of others on the self (Carpendale et al., 2005, p. 353). Rather than being viewed primarily as

names for inner mental entities that are causally related to behavior, mental state terms are

instead understood to obtain their meaning from how they are used in patterns of human activity

and social interactions (Carpendale & Lewis, 2004; Carpendale et al., 2005; Montgomery, 2005).

THE CURRENT STUDY

Taken as a whole, this work raises a new set of questions regarding the role of MST in terms

of its frequency, the social context (whom the child interacts with) in which it is used, and


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the discourse context (e.g., conflict talk) in which it is used. On the one hand, the use (or nonuse)

of MST is but one indicator of a child’s sociocognitive understanding, and a simple tally of

maternal references to emotion does not predict children’s emotion understanding as well as

maternal use of emotion terms in the context of some more elaborated discourse framework

(de Rosnay & Hughes, 2006). On the other hand, conversations with adults, although they

are thought to provide what one might conceptualize as more highly developed input (e.g.,

the use of causal explanations; appropriate and clearly interpretable references to mental states;

advanced forms of syntax, such as sentential complements), have in most cases been examined

as instances of children’s exposure to rich discourse. Although clearly important insofar as it is

predictive of children’s sociocognitive development, the notion of exposure is nevertheless lim-

ited as a proposed mechanism of development (but see Au, 2013). Just as a tally of maternal use

of mental state terms may be a proxy of sorts for maternal use of more elaborative discourse (de

Rosnay & Hughes, 2006), the use of elaborate maternal discourse may be a proxy of sorts for the

kind of moment-to-moment construction that characterizes children’s active engagement in rich

social interactive contexts.

The goal of the present research, then, is to examine preschoolers’ use of MST in peer con-

flicts from a social interactive perspective. We build on the observations of others who have

noted that preschool-age children’s use of specific kinds of MST changes from around age 3

through around age 5, with desire talk preceding talk about beliefs and knowledge (Bretherton

& Beeghly, 1982; Wellman & Liu, 2004), and that conflict interactions between children con-

stitute elaborate instances of peer negotiation, with rich talk about possessions, rules, partici-

pation rights, rights to objects, and so on (Corsaro, 1985; Corsaro & Maynard, 1996; Ross &

Conant, 1992; Whalen, 1995; Wheeler, 1994). Through these kinds of interactions, children

work through their own and their peers’ different and competing perspectives and thus engage

in the ongoing management of their social worlds (Corsaro & Schwartz, 1999). In order to

explore how children use MST for organizing their social interactions with one another, we

examine the spontaneously occurring uses of MST in their conflicts with one another. We

examine three particular aspects of children’s use of MST: (a) What are the types (range) and

frequency of mental state terms? (b) How are mental state terms linked with references to self

versus other? (c) How are mental state terms linked with different interactive functions?

Based on findings indicating a specific developmental unfolding of the different kinds of

MST (Bretherton & Beeghly, 1982; Wellman & Liu, 2004), we also consider whether there

are age differences in children’s use of MST: (a) Are there differences in the types (range)

and frequency of mental state terms used by preK–3 and preK–4 groups? (b) Are there

differences in preK–3 and preK–4 groups’ linking of mental state terms with self versus other

references? (c) Are there differences in preK–3 and preK–4 groups’ linking of mental state terms

with different interactive functions?

METHOD

Participants

Participants in this study were 40 preschoolers, ages 3–5 years, from two preschool classrooms:

one preK–3 classroom (10 girls and 9 boys who were age 3 by September 1 of the school year in


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question) and one preK–4 classroom (11 girls and 10 boys who were age 4 by September 1 of

the school year in question) in a bilingual university-affiliated laboratory school in South Texas.

The school maintains a student body composed of 50% dominant English-speaking and 50%dominant Spanish-speaking students as a base for its dual-language curriculum, which is reflec-

tive of the area’s population demographics. Specific socioeconomic data on each child were not

available, though the school’s selection process guarantees the inclusion of a majority of stu-

dents who meet a stratified criterion based on language proficiency and free or reduced price

meal eligibility. Approval of the project was obtained through the university’s institutional

review board, and although the children’s parents had given blanket consent for their children

to be observed as part of the laboratory school setting, an institutional review board–approved

letter was sent home with each child prior to the start of the study describing the observational

procedure.

Procedure

The classrooms were video and audio recorded one to three times per week during one spring

semester for a total of 21 visits (11 visits in the preK–3 classroom, 10 visits in the preK–4 class-

room). Each data collection session lasted about an hour during the school day during the less

structured centers activity, which involved high levels of peer interaction and much less direct

interaction with the teachers.

During each data collection session, three to four children were selected to be audio and video

recorded as they played in the centers. The activities at the centers were structured by the tea-

chers such that a maximum of four children were allowed in a given center at a time. On each

separate visit, every attempt was made to record different children in order to ensure that the

same children were not recorded repeatedly but, rather, that we sampled interactions from all

of the children in the class by the end of the data collection period. Each child who was recorded

agreed to wear a wireless lapel microphone connected to a transmitter that was clipped to his or

her pocket or held around the waist with a Velcro device to ensure the capture of what the child

and his or her playmates said. Verbal assent was obtained from each child prior to fitting him or

her with the recording devices. The selected children were also captured on a battery-operated

video camera operated by the research assistants, who were able to follow them if they changed

locations in the classroom.

Transcription

Given that the data were collected in a geographical location in which a significant number of

the population speak Spanish, and because the school where the data were collected is a

dual-language school, we were prepared to find that many of the children would speak Spanish

or perhaps code-switch between English and Spanish. Surprisingly, the children almost always

spoke English. Of the 2,043 conflict utterances, children used Spanish words in five utterances.

None of these five utterances contained mental state terms, so they are not included in the current

analysis. All conflict episodes (n¼ 124) between children were identified, transcribed, and

parsed into utterances (see description below) using both the video and audio recordings. Based

on Eisenberg and Garvey’s (1981) definition, a conflict episode was defined as a ‘‘sequence


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which begins with an opposition and ends with a resolution or dissipation of conflict’’ (p. 150).

This included a series of turns in which at least one interlocutor refused or countered the other;

any initial turn (or utterance) that was subsequently refused or countered; the refusal or counter

itself; and all subsequent utterances in which interlocutors negotiated, further countered,

resolved, or simply abandoned the conflict. Conflict episodes ended when an obvious settlement

was reached, one child left the scene of the interaction and the conflict was not pursued by

another child involved in the conflict, or the topic of the discourse was altered and not resumed.

We did not encounter any cases in which conflicts escalated to the point of physical violence or

serious disruption of the ongoing interactions.

Transcripts of the conflict episodes were then organized into utterances. An utterance was

defined using Gee’s (1993) basic speech units (BSUs). According to Gee, ‘‘Each BSU contains

on its last content word a salient change of pitch (and stress) and the words in each BSU are said

with an integrated intonational contour’’ (p. 339). This unit of analysis was chosen because it

allowed for the coding of the kinds of interactive functions of interest that in turn facilitated

the investigation of the immediate social context being constructed by the children through their

use of mental state terms. Although we analyze the range and frequencies of the individual men-

tal state terms used, it is their social function, embedded in this discursive context, that is the

main focus of this study. In addition to documenting what each speaker said, we included a

description of nonverbal behaviors and contextual features when necessary for interpretation

of the interactions.

Coding

Four different codes were applied to each individual utterance. The first two coding categories

identified the speaker: The first identified which classroom the child was in (preK–3 or preK–4),

and the second code identified the individual speaker. In order to identify each speaker anony-

mously, we assigned a unique identifying number to each of the three or four children being

recorded in each play center. Research assistants took notes at the time of data collection,

indicating which children were recorded that day and the color of their clothing or some other

identifying feature so that each utterance could be properly attributed to the specific child inter-

acting in the group when the interactions were transcribed from the audio and video recordings.

Utterances spoken by teachers were also noted and assigned an identifier. This happened

infrequently, most often at the initiation of children who were tattling on each other, but

occasionally when a child requested assistance from a teacher. These teacher utterances were

included in the transcripts in order to preserve the interactive context of the children’s utterances,

but because the analyses pertained to the children’s discourse, teacher utterances were not coded

further and were removed from the data set after coding was complete because interactions with

teachers were not part of the current analysis.

The third category of code identified the specific mental state term used (want, need, know,sorry, sad, etc.), and a fourth category of code was developed to capture the interactive function

of each utterance with a mental state term. The first two interactive function codes identified

utterances that indexed only the speaker’s own mental states: (a) initial bids related to one’s

own actions, for example, to take independent possession or control of an object (‘‘I want the

pink’’) or to enter or leave a play area (‘‘ooh, I wanna look at some shells,’’ said as the child


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approaches the play area where shells are on display); and (b) justifications (‘‘I need them’’) or

clarifications (including restatements and insistence) of one’s own actions or desires (‘‘well I

like big ones!’’). The next two coding categories identified utterances in which the speaker

indexed the interlocutor’s mental states: (c) control moves, such as directives to act, to stop act-

ing, or to attend to something specified by the speaker (‘‘You need to take turns’’); and (d)

requests for clarification of the other’s mental state (‘‘Do you want some?’’). A final category

(e) ‘‘other’’ included a relatively less frequent number of utterances that did not fit well into the

first four categories. These included more formulaic use of mental state terms, including apolo-

gies (e.g., ‘‘sorry’’)1 and threats=taunts that included references to emotions (e.g., ‘‘how so sad’’

or ‘‘he’s gonna be mad’’ sometimes said in a sing-song voice). Interrater reliability for the inter-

active function coding was calculated using Cohen’s kappa. The first author coded all of the

utterances. A random sample of 50% of the utterances was then equally divided and coded

between the second and third authors. The combined 50% of the second and third authors’ codes

were compared to the first author’s codes. Agreement was good: 88% of utterances yielded

agreement on interactive function codes (Cohen’s j¼ .849).

RESULTS

Based on previous studies reporting on the use of MST among preschoolers between 3 and 5

years of age (e.g., Bretherton & Beeghly, 1982; Budwig, 2000; Shatz et al., 1983; Wellman

& Liu, 2004), we did not expect (nor did we find, see the results reported here) differences in

the kinds of mental state terms used by preK–3 versus preK–4 children in our sample—wantand need were used most frequently in both groups). We did find, however, that although there

were roughly equal numbers of data collection sessions for each class (11 for the preK–3 class-

room, 10 for the preK–4 classroom) there were significantly more conflict episodes (92 for

preK–3, 32 for preK–4) per data collection session in the preK–3 corpus (M¼ 8.36) than in

the preK–4 corpus (M¼ 3.20), t(19)¼ 5.048, p< .001.

Despite this difference in the frequency of conflict episodes between the preK–3 and preK–4

children, the proportion of MST in their conflict talk was similar (9.3%, n¼ 122, of the preK–3

children’s conflict utterances had mental state terms; 8.4%, n¼ 42, of the preK–4 children’s

conflict utterances had mental state terms), and no significant differences were found between

the two groups in terms of the types of mental state terms used, v2(4, n¼ 166)¼ 5.126,

p¼ .275. Chi-square analysis was also performed to determine how the particular mental state

terms were paired with the interactive functions. Again, no significant differences were found

1All of the mental state terms used by the children in the current study are terms that have been reported in earlier

studies (e.g., Furrow, Moore, Davidge, & Chaisson, 1992; Shatz et al., 1983) except sorry. We chose to include this term

in the current analysis for two reasons. First, others have made a distinction between mentalistic and conversational uses

of mental state terms (Bloom, Rispoli, Gartner, & Hafitz, 1989; Shatz et al., 1983), arguing that uses of phrases such as

you know do not represent true references to mental states but may instead function as conversational fillers or other con-

versational moves. Sorry, although it could be said to reference something like remorse, could arguably be interpreted as

not being truly mentalistic. Given the current theoretical framework, however, we define all uses of language as conver-

sational or interactive moves and therefore do not exclude terms that do not clearly have the semantic reference to sub-

jective states. Second, we note that sorry might have a distinctive role in the conflict talk of children. Given that much of

the previous work on MST has not examined peer conflict talk, we consider it a potentially important addition to the

group of previously studied mental state terms for this interactive context.


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in how the preK–3 and the preK–4 children paired the mental state terms with the different inter-

active functions, v2(4, n¼ 166)¼ 3.902, p¼ .419. Because no differences were found between

the two preschool classes in their proportional use of mental state terms or in how they linked

these with the different interactive functions, all subsequent results reported here are for the two

preschool classes combined.

In order to determine the frequency and range of the children’s use of different mental state

terms in conflict interactions, we first calculated the number of conflict utterances in which the

children used mental state terms. In the 124 conflict episodes identified and transcribed

(n¼ 1,859 conflict utterances), 9% (n¼ 166) of the utterances had mental state terms. Wantand need were the two most frequently used terms. Other mental state terms, such as know,sorry, happy, and sad, were also used, though less frequently than want or need (see Table 1).

We also wanted to know whether and how frequently children’s use of MST was paired with

references to self-only versus references to the other (the peer).2 There was no significant differ-

ence between the pairing of MST with those interactive functions that referenced self only versus

those that referenced the other, v2(4, n¼ 161)¼ 6.852, p¼ .144 (see Table 2).

Closer analysis of the different interactive functions indicated that although children did not

exclusively pair specific mental state terms with specific interactive functions, the distribution

of mental state terms with interactive functions was not random but patterned, v2(8)¼ 120.839,

p< .000. Need was most often used when the child was engaged in a control move, such as direct-

ing the other child’s action (e.g., ‘‘you need to get out of there’’) or directing the other child’s atten-

tion to instructions on how to perform an action (e.g., ‘‘we need it like this,’’ then the child

demonstrates). Another prevalent interactive function of need was to justify, clarify, or insist on

one’s own action or previous request (e.g., ‘‘but I need this and those’’). Want (or wanna in eight

cases) was paired most often with bids for action (‘‘I want to be the sister’’), objects (‘‘I want a

little car’’), or inclusion in a play area (e.g., ‘‘ooh, I wanna look at some shells’’; see Table 3).

Mental State Terms in Their Interactive Contexts

Looking more closely at how the particular mental state terms were used in context, we noted that

the children used mental state terms to accomplish a number of interactive functions that seemed to

go beyond simply making their own subjective mental states known to the other. As noted pre-

viously, the two most commonly used forms were want and need. From a purely semantic perspec-

tive, these terms have very similar meanings. Both are used to index desire, but the children

distinguished between desires that were relatively less urgent and those on which they were

insisting through a previously issued request or directive. Many of the utterances with want were

TABLE 1

Frequency of Different Mental State Terms Used

Term Want Need Know Sorry Other Total

Total 64 (38.6%) 56 (33.7%) 17 (10.2%) 14 (8.4%) 15 (9.0%) 166

2There were five cases in which two children used the phrase ‘‘how so sad.’’ These cases were removed from the

current semantic person reference analysis because a self or other reference could not be reasonably determined.


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embedded in initial requests (the child’s own) or were used when inquiring into the desires of the

interlocutor (‘‘do you want some’’). For example, when one child said, ‘‘I want to milk the cow,’’

not only did she make a bid for action using a desire term, but her utterance was seemingly neutral

at this point in the interaction with regard to her interlocutor’s attention to her (the speaker’s)

statement. Similarly, a child’s inquiry into another child’s desire, as in ‘‘do you want some,’’

was presented with no apparent controversy or urgency. In this way, want was used flexibly to

index children’s own or their peer’s desires in moves that were relatively less controversial.

The use of need, in contrast, was typically a repeated request, an insistence, sometimes in the

form of a justification or clarification of the initial request. For example, when a child in the

present study said to another child ‘‘but I need this and those,’’ the use of the term need func-

tioned to intensify the child’s previous request, to insist on an already stated desire. This utter-

ance came at a point in the conflict when the child was insisting or pleading with his peer. Thus,

he positioned his peer’s compliance with his request as urgent with regard to his (the speaker’s)

wishes. In this way, the child’s use of need indexed a sense of urgency rather than a straightfor-

ward indication of a mental state and simultaneously positioned the interlocutor a bit differently.

Note the use of need in line 6 of Example 1:

Example 1: ‘‘But I need this and those’’1. Child 1: How about this one will be like a garage.

2. Child 2: NO (whining) DON’T GET MINE

3. Child 2: You get those.

4. Child 2: {touching blocks}

5. Child 1: NO! DON’T DO THAT!

6. Child 2: But I need this and those.

7. Child 1: ok.

TABLE 3

Cross-Tabulation of Mental State Terms With Interactive Functions

Function Want Need Other v2

Bids for action, objects, entrance to play area 27 (12.3) 5 (10.8) 0 (8.9) 120.839�

Control move 12 (15) 25 (13.2) 2 (10.8)

Request clarification of or affirm other’s mental state 8 (4.6) 1 (4) 3 (3.3)

Justification=clarification=insistence of own action, previous

request, or mental state

11 (17.7) 25 (15.5) 10 (12.7)

Other 6 (14.3) 0 (12.5) 31 (10.3)

Note. Expected counts appear in parentheses below observed counts.�p� .01.

TABLE 2

Cross-Tabulation of Mental State Terms With Self-Only Versus Other References

Reference Want Need Know Sorry Other

Reference to self only 43 (40.3) 29 (35.5) 11 (10.8) 12 (8.9) 7 (6.3)

Reference to other 21 (23.5) 27 (20.5) 6 (6.2) 2 (5.1) 3 (3.7)

Note. Expected counts appear in parentheses below observed counts.


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We also looked a bit more closely at two of the less frequently used forms in their interactive

context. The use of know (n¼ 19) also seemed to function beyond a straightforward indication to

the interlocutor of the speaker’s knowledge. The children’s use of know was often used to indi-

cate their own knowledge or understanding of the other’s desire or orientation to the ongoing

situation. However, it was also used to signal (in seven cases) a simultaneous intent to further

their own agenda despite this sympathetic stance. Note the child’s use of know in line 3 of

Example 2:

Example 2: ‘‘I know, but you shouldn’t’’1. Child 1: look, I’m building a bridge for all of us.

2. Child 2: (whining) hey, I got the farm first.

3. Child 1: I know, but you shouldn’t.

4. Child 1: I’m building!

The use of know here is similar to one of the ways the children used sorry. It would not have

been surprising to find that the preschoolers in the present study used the form sorry to straight-

forwardly apologize for a transgression, as children of this age are often directly coached to do

(e.g., ‘‘Say you are sorry’’ followed with the child saying ‘‘sorry,’’ perhaps unconvincingly to

the adult who issued the directive). Although the children did use sorry as a formulaic apology in

some cases (n¼ 8), the use of sorry was more nuanced than this in the other six cases. Rather

than simply indicating the speaker’s remorse, it was typically used as a mitigator in light of the

child’s intention to again pursue his or her own agenda (see Example 3). In this way, know and

sorry were sometimes used as part of a strategy that allowed the child to both continue to act

according to his or her own goals while simultaneously acknowledging something of the other’s

perspective. Note the child’s use of sorry in line 7 of Example 3:

Example 3: ‘‘Sorry I don’t like small ones’’1. Child 1: Take that one.

2. Child 2: No.

3. Child 1: Which one?

4. Child 1: It’s the small one or the big one.

5. Child 2: The big one.

6. Child 1: The small one.

7. Child 2: Sorry I don’t like small ones.

8. Child 1: Well I like big ones!

9. Child 2: I like big ones too.

DISCUSSION

Indexing Self and Other

Consistent with previous work (Bretherton & Beeghly, 1982; Wellman & Liu, 2004), the chil-

dren in the present study, being on the younger side of the 3- to 5-year-old range, used a variety

of mental state terms, but the most frequently used terms were want and need, suggesting a focus

on volition and desires. This emphasis on volition and desires is also consistent with Budwig’s

(2002) findings with younger children (18–36 months) whose use of MST centered on desire


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talk (their own). Our findings diverge (not unexpectedly because the children in our sample were

a bit older than those in Budwig’s, 2002) insofar as the children in the current study also used

desire talk to index their peers’ mental states. They indexed their own desires when making bids

for actions, objects, or entrance to a play area and justifying, clarifying, and insisting on their

own needs but also indexed their peers’ mental states when inquiring into the peers’ desires

or when directing them to act in certain ways. This indicates that the children in our study

had the ability to decenter in a sense when it came to talking about desires. They were able

to use multiple forms to variously reference desires in multiple interactive contexts, sometimes

using these forms to refer to their own mental states, sometimes using them to refer to their

peers’ mental states.

Considering the varied rhetorical and interactive uses of mental state terms in the present

corpus, we see that the children in this sample accomplished more with their use of mental state

terms than simply or straightforwardly communicating their inner states to one another. Although

communicating something about inner states to one another may be a related function of such

utterances, the more precise social interactive function that is publicly enacted is a salient feature

of these children’s use of mental state language and could be said to subsume the more widely

studied referential function of such terms. In this way, we see how it is that such young children,

prior to the age at which they are likely to pass false belief tasks, are already fully engaged in

complex social positioning that is intricately linked to the specifics of their own and their peers’

interactive goals and strategies. They are doing much more than letting one another know what

they want, feel, or think; they are using discourse about mental states to organize their play with

one another, furthering their interactive goals in the context of conflicts with their peers.

It is also noteworthy that the children’s use of mental state terms in this peer setting illustrates

their active participation in these conflict interactions with one another. They clearly constructed

and responded to one another’s moment-to-moment self and other positionings, mobilizing a

variety of mental state terms in a variety of ways to accomplish both highly organized and highly

nuanced interactions. Thus, these conflict interactions with one another constitute a rich setting

in which the use of mental state language contributes to the development of these children’s

social understanding.

Limitations and Future Directions of the Current Study

The findings reported here indicate that the younger (preK–3) children engaged in more conflicts

per data collection session than did the older (preK–4) children. This is the only way in which

the analyses of the preK–3 and preK–4 children’s uses of mental state terms during peer con-

flicts were found to differ. Although the current study does not address features of the children’s

conflict talk that might help explain why one sees this difference in the frequency of conflicts,

separate analyses of this same corpus indicate a significant difference in other aspects of the

preK–3 and preK–4 groups’ conflict discourse, including the differential use of simple versus

more complex forms of justification (Comparini, Perez, Torres, Ferguson, & Gomez, 2013)

and more frequent mitigation of directives in the preK–4 group (Comparini, Torres, Perez,

Ferguson, & Gomez, 2013). One possibility, though speculative at this point, is that the

development of such forms of linguistic interaction such as the use of complex justifications

and mitigation strategies functions to minimize instances of conflict. Although we cannot speak


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directly to this possibility or to the possibility that something else about the preschool experience

could lead to this difference, we suspect that important differences in the children’s use of dis-

course related to their developing social cognition occur between preK–3 and preK–4. Further

analyses are required to better understand whether and how the difference in frequency of con-

flict talk observed here is indeed linked to these discursive developments.

Given the small sample size in the current study, we were only able to begin to explore pat-

terns in how children deploy some of the more frequently used MST in their social interactions

with one another. Use of a larger sample might allow for further analysis of some of the less

frequently used forms to determine patterns and strategies of use for managing conflict. For

example, the use of sorry, a form that has not typically been included in studies on MST,

may play a unique role in conflict interactions. Insofar as it can be said to be a semantic reference

to the speaker’s remorse or regret, we also noted cases in the present data set in which it

appeared to be used by children to express an orientation to the other’s concerns while simul-

taneously furthering an ongoing agenda of their own. A larger sample of such uses of sorryand perhaps some of the other less frequently used MST in the current study might allow for

further examination of children’s simultaneous attention to self and other in conflict utterances.

Another analytical approach that might provide further insight into the ways in which children

construct their social relational interactions with their peers through the use of MST would be to

take a more conversation analytical approach. Looking not only at how children construct

utterances with MST designed to accomplish certain immediate interactive goals with their peers,

a more thoroughly interactive analysis might also look at how children’s peers respond to these

uses of MST. Such an approach could shed light on the different ways in which children use

MST in their conflicts with one another, focusing on the effectiveness of children’s use of MST

in the overall conflict. Such an approach could yield even more insight into children’s

sociocognitive understanding at this age as it would take into account their interactive skills.

The current study contributes to researchers’ understanding of how children’s active engage-

ment in their ongoing peer interactions contributes to the normative development of social inter-

active competence. This ability to understand self and other has been identified as one important

component of the social-emotional learning model (Denham & Chavaughn, 2010) that is predic-

tive of school readiness and later academic success and has been found to make ‘‘unique

contributions to kindergarten outcomes in reading achievement’’ (Nix, Bierman, Domitrovich,

& Gill, 2013, p. 1000). As researchers continue to document the precise links between social

development and academic achievement at the preschool-to-kindergarten transition, peer-based

interventions might be developed alongside the teacher–child interventions (see Teglasi, 2010)

that have been successful with at-risk populations.

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The Development of Social Cognition: Preschoolers' Use of Mental State Talk in Peer Conflicts

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