Abstract

This study investigated the associations between children's social-cognitive abilities, their conversations about internal states with family members, and their later self-serving biases in descriptions of the sibling relationship. At Time 1, 32 preschoolers were observed during two naturalistic interaction sessions with mothers and younger siblings. Various features of mothers' and children's internal state (IS) language were coded. Each child also completed a battery of three social-cognitive measures. Two years later, 26 children were interviewed about various aspects of their sibling relationship, and responses were coded for five measures of self-serving bias. Although children's social-cognitive skills were not strongly related to their later self-serving biases, there were a number of associations between families' IS talk and children's later biases. In general, results indicated that children who were other-oriented in the content and function of their IS language and who discussed internal states in causally connected ways tended to exhibit fewer self-serving biases two years later. In addition, when mothers were attentive to their children in conversations about internal states (as opposed to ignoring them, or being selectively focused on the baby), children tended to have fewer self-serving biases two years later. Thus, these results support the social-constructivist notion that the quality of children's earlier interactions with family members is related to the way they construe themselves in comparison to their siblings.