From what kind of speech a child hears around him at an age when he himself is only able to babble, his ability to communicate with people in the future depends.
For a long time it was believed that social skills develop by themselves, they do not need to be taught. However, new research shows that the environment of the child in the first years of life depends on his ability to communicate with people in the future. Psychologists from the University of York (UK) observed 40 women with children aged 10, 12, 16 and 20 months. The researchers recorded how mothers interacted with their babies. They were especially interested in “psychological comments” – assumptions about what the child thinks and feels when performing an action. For example, if a child was unable to pick up a toy, open a door, or assemble a pyramid, the parent might remark aloud that he seemed “unhappy.”
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After some time, when the children were already 5-6 years old, scientists checked the development of their thinking and social skills. For this, the method of “strange stories” was used. These stories are designed to demonstrate one of several types of complex social interactions: lies, “white lies”, persuasion, pretense, jokes, mutual misunderstanding, the use of metaphors and sarcasm, bluffing … After the story, the child was asked control questions to determine how well he understands the scenarios described. It turned out that the more often parents used “psychological comments” when communicating with the baby in the first years of his life, the better he understood the experiences and motivations of other people.
“These results show that a mother’s ability to capture a child’s thoughts and experiences at a very early age plays a big role in developing a child’s ability to understand the psychology of other people,” said study lead author Elizabeth Kirk (Elizabeth Kirk). In other words, it develops his social skills for the future.
For more details, see E. Kirk et al. “A longitudinal investigation of the relationship between maternal mind-mindedness and the theory of mind”, British Journal of Developmental Psychology, published on July 27, 2015.