Abstract
Adult input is crucial for children’s development of language, specifically their acquisition of mental state words about feelings and thoughts. It is important for children to learn these words when young, as being able to describe and understand mental states is a key part of human socialisation. Over the past 20 years, children’s attendance in early childhood education has increased for many reasons. This means that children are spending more time at early childhood education overall. However, little is known on the effects educators have on children’s mental state talk. The current study aimed to explore the way educators are talking to toddlers before and after an oral language intervention (ENRICH) to assess the impact on 20- to 45-month-old children’s mental state talk. In the current study, the 24 centres recruited were visited and had four routines filmed for 5 minutes each at two timepoints; Year 1 (baseline) with 64 educators and 94 children participating and Year 3 with 64 educators and 192 children participating. After baseline measurements, the intervention condition educators were trained in ENRICH (Enhancing Rich Conversations) techniques to further increase their skills in supporting children’s language development in English and in te reo Māori. Routines were chosen based on contexts where educators would have one-on-one or small-group times with the children: book time, kai (meal) time, play time and group time. At Year 3, there was overall a small amount of mental state talk, both for educators and children, and even smaller amounts when these were broken up by mental state word category (feelings, cognitions, perceptions and desires). Findings were mixed, with increases in desire and total mental state words during book time for educators in the Active Control groups, increases in cognition words during kai time for educators in the ENRICH centres, increases in perception words during play time for educators in the ENRICH centres, and increases in desire words during group time for children in ENRICH centres. Overall, the findings of the study showed limited support for the effect of the ENRICH intervention on educators’ and children’s mental state talk. Future research could extend these analyses to later waves of the study.