어머니의 대화 방식과 아동의 수줍음이 아동의 사회적 유능성에 미치는 영향

The effects of maternal elaborated mental state talk and shyness on child’s social competence: The mediating role of theory of mind

The present study investigates the mediational effect of theory of mind among shyness, maternal elaborated mental state talk(EMS) and social competence. For this, 207 pairs of 1st grader at an elementary school and their mother, and 17 teachers participated in this study. Children completed ToM battery including second-order belief and some stories from Strange Story Test. Shyness subscale form CBQ and MMSII was completed by their mother, and T-CRS by teachers. The results shows that EMS can predict ToM, however shyness can’t. The results also indicates that the relationship between EMS and social competence was fully mediated by ToM. The findings contribute to our understanding of mediating role of ToM between parenting, specifically mother’s preference of mentioning and explaining mental states, and social competence. Based on this findings. we could consider the effects of the parent education, such as conversation coaching program, as a part of the intervention to enhance children’s social competence.