Developmental changes in young children's understanding of their mothers' play inteions underlying maternal playful teasing

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The aim of this study was to demonstrate developmental changes in children's understanding of their mothers' play intentions during playful teasing. "Playful teasing" was defined here to include teasing actions that are intended to lead to enjoyment rather than distress, the teasing actions are "fake". To understand the playful intention, childern must employ meta-communication. Then it is suggested that the playful intention would be communicated with play signs that are accompanied with the actions.The focus of this study was experimentally evoked playful teasing of children by their mothers. Each mother-child pair was asked to play freely for 15 min, with toys that were selected that might threaten of surprise the young childran. The mother-child dyads included 14 one-year-olds, 19 two-year-olds, and 16 three-year-olds were participated. Mothers' teasing actions were categorized as literal teasing, pretend teasing, and expressive teasing. Children's reactions to the teasing werecategorized as distress, attention, enjoyment, and pretense. The main results were as follows : a)the two-year-old children responded the mothers with enjoyment when the mothers presented positive expressions accompanied with their teasing actions, b)three-year-old children showed enjoyment to the mothers' pretense, and occasionally even literal teasing.These results suggest that from two years of age, children develop skills to read the mothers' playful intention, and at three years of age, they seem to possess the skill to read the latent meaning of the mothers' pretense. Thus, development of mind-reading skills of another's intention is considered as it is formed through intersubjective processes based on meta-communication.