How does a mother perceive her child's mind? Developmental changes in child behaviours that enable mothers to perceive their child’s minds

ABSTRACT

This study explored child behaviours that enable mothers to perceive their child’s minds. We administered the Mind Perception Questionnaire to 216 women with children aged between 0 and 24 months and 221 working women without children. Participants responded with mind perceptions for various entities, including for their children (a 0–2-year-old child). Further, to examine child-related behaviours that may influence mothers’ perceptions of their children's minds, we asked them about which actions made them perceive what their babies had in mind. We found that mothers perceived their children as having minds similar to their own while working women without children perceived 0–2-year-old children as being different from themselves. Mothers’ perceptions of their children’s minds were associated with child-related behaviours that made communication possible. Thus, this study was able to identify important milestones of child development, by examining the mother's point of view regarding their children’s minds.

KEYWORDS:

• mind perception
• perception of children’s minds
• child development milestones
• appearance of first words

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The authors confirm that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research(C) [grant number: JP20K03366] and JSPS KAKENHI Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B) [grant number: JP16K17322].

Notes on contributors

Midori Ban

Midori Ban is a lecturer in the Department of Systems Innovation at Osaka University in Japan and a researcher at the Research Centre for Psychological Science at Doshisha University in Japan. Her research interests focus on cognitive development in toddlers and Human-Agent Interaction of children.

Hideyuki Takahashi

Hideyuki Takahashi is an associate professor in the Department of Systems Innovation at Osaka University in Japan. His research interests focus on human-robot interaction, human-agent interaction, and cognitive science.