Mental State Talk (MST) is utterances describing invisible mental aspects. The first aim of this study was to investigate the characteristics of Parental MST and Child MST and their concurrent association in a Swedish population, and the second aim was to relate these MST measures to the children’s general language abilities. Seventy-seven dyads of parents and their 25-month-old toddlers participated. MST was assessed by videotaping the dyads during free-play sessions in a laboratory and general language abilities were based on parental reports. Forty-nine toddlers did not produce MST, while all parents used MST. Child MST was positively associated with vocabulary and grammar. Parental MST was not associated with Child MST nor the children’s general language abilities. In exploratory analyses, Parental MST referred to another than the child was positively correlated with vocabulary and grammar. Further studies are needed to confirm these findings and continue studying MST in different linguistic contexts.

中文翻译：

---

父母的心理状态谈话与幼儿的语言能力之间没有同时相关性

心理状态谈话（MST）是描述看不见的心理方面的话语。本研究的第一个目的是调查瑞典人群中父母 MST 和儿童 MST 的特征及其同时关联，第二个目的是将这些 MST 测量与儿童的一般语言能力联系起来。七十七对父母和他们 25 个月大的孩子参加了活动。MST 是通过在实验室自由玩耍期间对二人进行录像来评估的，而一般语言能力则基于家长的报告。49 名幼儿没有产生 MST，而所有家长都使用了 MST。儿童 MST 与词汇和语法呈正相关。父母 MST 与儿童 MST 或儿童的一般语言能力无关。在探索性分析中，父母MST与孩子的词汇和语法呈正相关。需要进一步的研究来证实这些发现并继续研究不同语言背景下的 MST。