Maternal mental state language during storytelling versus free-play contexts and its relation to child language and socioemotional outcomes at 12 and 30 months of age

This study compared two contexts (storytelling and free -play) to analyse which context promoted more maternal references to mental states at two time points and to investigate their relationships with children’s language and socioemotional outcomes. The sample comprised 91 mothers during interactions with their children (44% boys) when the children were aged 10–15 months and subsequently at 28–33 months. The mothers were asked to tell 2 stories...