A Longitudinal Study of Mother-Child Relationships and Theory of Mind in the Preschool Period

To investigate individual differences in theory of mind acquisition, this study examined whether different aspects of early mother-child relationships contributed to the development of false belief understanding at the close of the preschool period. Forty-six mother and child pairs were seen when children were two and again at five years of age. At age two, home-based Q-sort observations of attachment security and maternal sensitivity were made, and mothers completed a number of self-report measures to create an aggregate of maternal emotional distress. At age five, attachment security and maternal distress were reassessed, and false belief tasks were administered that were based on unexpected identities and locations of objects. In addition, attachment-relevant false belief tasks involving separation from caregivers were also used, which children found significantly more difficult than tasks involving objects. Age five security predicted object location task performance. Maternal sensitivity and emotional distress at age two predicted later caregiver location task performance, even controlling for age five measures. These results support a growing literature on the importance of relationship processes and parenting context to theory of mind acquisition.