• Korean Journal of Childcare and Education
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.133-151
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• 2014

The purpose of this study was to examine maternal mental-state talks while mothers and their 2-year-old children interacted in two contexts which were pretense/role-play and shared book reading contexts. Thirty-six dyads of mothers and their 2-year-old children participated in this study. The results showed that the mothers made more references to mental-state in the pretense/role-ply context than in the book reading context, but the ratio of using the three types of mental state talks(i.e., desire, feeling, and cognition) did not vary with the contexts. The most frequently used mental-state talk by the mothers was 'desire' in both contexts and the tendency to use the three types of mental-state talks in the two contexts was related. The results of this study suggest implications for providing useful information on the role of mothers in the development of children's theory of mind.