Maternal engagement, mind-related terms, and children’s understanding of the mind

The present research is a longitudinal study of the relations between maternal engagement, mothers’ use of mind-related terms, and children's understanding of the mind. Each of the three aspects of maternal engagement that were assessed as well as mothers’ use of mind-related terms were found to be concurrently associated with children's performance on false belief tasks. Mothers' use of mind-related terms was found to be positively correlated with all three dimensions of maternal engagement as well. At a two-year follow up, the Time One maternal engagement variables, but not mothers' use of mind-related terms, were associated with children's understanding of interpretation.