Talking Minds: Group Gender Composition and Educators’ Mental State Language in Early Childhood Education and Care

ABSTRACT Children's exposure to mental state language (MSL) has implications for their social, emotional and cognitive developmental outcomes. Although parental MSL is found to vary as a function of child gender, gender differences in children's MSL exposure are yet to be considered in the early childhood education and care (ECEC) context. This study examined whether changes in the gender composition of child‐groups were associated with educators’ use of MSL during centre‐scheduled playtime within toddler classrooms. All educator utterances directed to children were transcribed and coded for MSL. Each instance of a mental state term was counted and classified as perception, desire, emotion, or cognition. We analysed educators’ MSL content types across 182 interactional episodes with 13 educators. Results indicated that educators used more perception terms when the proportion of boys increased, and more desire terms when the proportion of girls increased. No significant associations were found for emotion, cognition, or overall MSL. Considering the developmental trajectory and functionality of children's exposure to MSL content subtypes, these findings suggest that educators systematically change their language so that girls receive developmentally more advanced MSL content than boys at the same age. Given the established role of MSL in children's social‐emotional and cognitive outcomes, these findings have implications for ECEC policy and educator training. Addressing gender‐related variation in children's MSL exposure may help ensure equitable opportunity for language‐mediated development in early childhood settings.