The Secret To Building Children's Social Skills
May 13, 2009
The way that mothers talk to their children when they are young has a lasting
effect on children's social skills, according to a research study funded by the
Economic and Social Research Council. The researchers found that children whose
mothers often talked to them about people's feelings, beliefs, wants, and
intentions, developed better social understanding than children whose mothers
did not include much 'mental state talk' in their conversations.
The study, based at the University of Sussex, followed children from the age of
3 to the age of 12, measuring their ability to perform tasks designed to measure
their social understanding. One of these tasks, developed by the researchers to
test social understanding in middle childhood (from 8 to 12 years old), used
clips from the TV comedy, 'The Office'.
Dr Yuill, who led the later stages of the research, explains: "Ricky
Gervais's character, David Brent, is a typical example of someone who is very
insensitive and reads social situations incorrectly. We cringe to watch it
because we are embarrassed by his complete lack of social understanding."
From the age of 8, the children in the study were beginning to cringe too,
rating scenarios with David Brent's faux pas as more embarrassing than those
without and showing a good understanding of what he was doing wrong. By the end
of the study, children did as well as mothers on this and other tasks measuring
social understanding, showing that by the age of 12, children can be as socially
sophisticated as adults.
The researchers also observed how each of the mothers talked to their child when
they were 3 years old as they looked at a series of pictures together. They
found that children whose mothers had often described the mental state of people
in the pictures - their emotions or what they might be thinking or going to do
next - did particularly well on the social understanding tasks.
The link between early mental state talk and the development of social
understanding was strongest in early childhood and was independent of the
mother's IQ or social understanding. By the time the children were aged 8 to 12,
the influence of early mother talk was less strong, probably, the researchers
suggest, because older children are less dependent on their mothers and more
likely to be influenced by their peers and other adults.
The study also revealed that understanding others is one thing, but behaving
well towards them is another. The researchers were surprised to find that
children with the most sophisticated social understanding also exhibited the
most negative behaviour towards their mothers when they were steering a model
car around a race track - a task where they needed to work together as a team.
"From our study, I certainly wouldn't say that having a good social
understanding guarantees good behaviour. Having a good social understanding is
only part of the picture - it has to be used in socially beneficial ways,"
said Dr Yuill.
Although its relationship to behaviour is complex, social understanding is an
essential skill for interacting with others both at work and at play. And the
findings of this study suggest that children who experience lots of mental state
talk in their early years get the best start for developing this skill.
According to Dr Yuill, this has exciting implications for all those involved in
bringing up children: "Using mental state talk is not hard. It does not
require particularly good language skills or a sophisticated social
understanding and it seems eminently teachable. It would be really interesting
to work with people who run family learning programmes to explore whether
teaching parents how to use mental state talk has a beneficial effect on their
children's social understanding" she said.
Source:
Danielle Moore
Economic & Social Research Council
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