Narratives and Internal States

1. Internal State Language During a Mother-Child Book Sharing Activity GleidesAlexsandra Lopes Rizzi New York University Narratives and Internal States Participants & Procedures Cultural and Gender Variations • There was a significant trend for gender, F(1,42)= 3.58, p<.10. Across all cultures, mother-daughter dyads used more internal states than did mother-son dyads. • There was a significant cultural difference , F(10, 78)=8.79, p<.001. for types of internal states used. • U. S. American mothers used overall more internal states (M=42.44, SD= 18.55). Compared to the other mothers, they also talked about cognition more, F(2, 42)= 20.74, p<.001. • Brazilian mothers used more words of perception, especially with girls, F(2, 42) = 8.44, p<.001, than did the other mothers. • 48 mother-child dyads were selected from a larger study: • 16 Spanish-speaking dyads from Lima, Peru. • 16 English-speaking dyads from Boston and New York, U.S. • 16 Portuguese-speaking dyads from Porto Alegre, Brazil • All children were 5 years old (M=65.15, SD=3.64), monolingual speakers of their native language, and had no known developmental delays. • Mothers were mostly college-educated, middle class, and around 35 years of age. • The dyads were audio-taped sharing a wordless book, Frog Where Are You? (Mayer, 1969). • Audio recordings were transcribed by native speakers of the respective languages using a standard format (MacWhinney, 2000). • Narratives are both factual and fictional stories individuals share to communicate with others and to entertain. • Narratives are composed of two main components: Evaluative and referential information (Labov & Waletsky, 1967). • Referential factual aspects of the experience • Evaluations subjective interpretation of the experience • Internal states represent the understanding of the mental and emotional worlds of individuals (e.g., cognition, perception, volition, emotion, intentionality) and is one way in which narrators communicate evaluation. Demographic Information The Importance of Internal States • Spontaneous use and recognition of internal states are linked to children’s: • Development of theory of mind • Understanding of self (e.g., self-concept) • Emotional self-regulation • These milestones of children’s development (self-regulation, self-concept and theory of mind) have been linked to school readiness and school achievement. • The existing research focuses solely on emotion and cognition, ignoring all other internal states (e.g., intentionality and perception). Coding Scheme: Types of Internal States Cultural and Gender Variations in the Use of Internal States Language • The use of internal state language, such as emotion, varies by culture . For example, American mothers discuss sadness with their children more often than do Chinese mothers (Fivush & Wang, 2005). • The use of emotion words also varies by the child’s gender. Mother-daughter dyads use more emotion words (especially sadness) than mother-son dyads (Fivush & Buckner, 2003). • Parents’ use of emotion language differs depending on how their culture views gender. Peruvian mother-son dyads use more emotion words than mother-daughter dyads, whereas the opposite is true in various ethnic groups in the U.S. (Melzi & Fernández, 2004). • Qualitative analyses show that these cultural differences were most • prominent in the non-narrative context (i.e., referring to both the child’s or • mother’s internal states, such as What do you think is happening here? or • What do you see the boy and dog doing? Conclusion • The patterns of internal state talk found in this study suggest that children from diverse cultures have different exposure and opportunities to use internal states on a daily basis. • Results support previous findings regarding the differences across cultures in both the frequency of internal states and the saliency of particular states. In particular, cognition is most salient for the U.S. culture, whereas perception is most salient for the Brazilian group. • These differences are most likely due to differences in the book sharing styles across the cultures under investigation (e.g., storybuilding vs. storytelling) and the extent to which dyads incorporated the real and the story world in their narrative exchange. • These differences might influence how children attribute these states to self and others in their everyday interactions. Inter-rater reliability was established on 20% of the transcripts, and yielded a kappa of .87. Types and Frequency of Internal States Coding • On average dyads used 44.21 (SD= 19.40) internal state references • per transcript (ranging from 15 to 98). • Mothers used most of the internal state language (M=39.83, SD= 7.01). • Dyads talked most about emotion, cognition and perception. • Excerpts from a transcript illustrate each of these types: • Cognition: The boy and the dog thought the frog was • under the bed. • Emotion: They (the little baby frogs) look very happy together. • Perception:And he's (the boy) looking in the hole. Research Questions • How do dyads from Brazil, Peru and the U.S. use internal state language during a wordless book reading task? • Are there variations in the frequency and types of internal states used across cultures? • Are there variations in the frequency and types of internal states used across genders? Acknowledgements Dr. Gigliana Melzi, Adina Schick, Joy Kennedy, and the members of the Child Language Research Team.