Many studies have examined the relationship between a child’s temperament and its effect on his or her early language development. However, few studies have investigated the detrimental effects a child’s negative affectivity may have on their language development and potential ways these effects may be limited through parental behaviors. The current study aimed to investigate if physical or verbal maternal scaffolding behaviors moderated the effect negative affect has on language development. Although it was expected that maternal encouragement of physical activity would play a moderating role in the relationship between temperament and language development, no such relationship was found. One explanation for these findings is the operationalization of maternal scaffolding behaviors in the present study; previous studies have also included instances of emotional and motivational scaffolding. Future efforts should aim to incorporate a broader range of potential scaffolding behaviors in their coding protocols.

Despite numerous studies of the development of theory of mind, how children express their understanding of mind in less structured, play settings has gone largely unstudied. Many developmental accounts, regardless of disagreement on other theoretical issues, agree that the child’s engagement within social contexts is crucial to the development of understanding of mind. Our goals were to collect a detailed account of how children use their understanding of mind and how mothers align their support to the child’s capabilities within social interactions. In this longitudinal study, typically developing preschoolers (N = 52) engaged in a hiding game with their mothers in a semi-structured play setting when the children were 42-, 54-, and 66-months old. Aspects of children’s understanding of mind were rated including understanding of knowledge access, deception, false belief, and emotional response to false belief, as well as, affective charge and engagement with the task. Mothers’ utterances were coded for various characteristics, particularly role and content. Children’s understanding of mind increased across visits and positively correlated with false belief task performance at the 42- and 54-month visits, rs = .35 and .39, p < .05, but not the 66-month visit, rs = –.25, p = .10. Children’s enthusiasm was positively related to their understanding of mind at the first and second visits, but not the last. Mothers tailored the content of their utterances to the child’s growing expertise, but whether mothers adjusted the role of their utterances to children’s understanding of mind remains unclear. Observing children’s playful use of their emerging understanding of mind in social interactions allowed for the capture of subtle variations in how children express and caregivers support their understanding.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

This study examined correlations between four dimensions of maternal scaffolding, maternal beliefs and values, children’s temperament, and children’s performance and use of self‑regulation strategies on problem‑solving tasks. There are two foci of this study: examining factors that predict the quality of maternal scaffolding, and assessing the relationship between quality of maternal scaffolding and children’s problem solving. Participants consisted of 10 mother‑child dyads in the experimental group and 10 children in the control group. Using a pre- and post‑test design, children were given near and far transfer independent problem‑solving tasks. The experimental group also worked with their mothers on one task during a scaffolded interaction. Maternal beliefs predicted quality of maternal scaffolding, and quality of maternal scaffolding predicted children’s monitoring during the post‑test. Mothers’ scaffolding techniques appear to be related to their beliefs about parenting and educating children, and children appear to learn certain self‑regulation strategies during optimal scaffolded interactions.