UCLA

Does the way we talk about other people’s minds depend on the language we speak? This dissertation explores this question by developing and applying a novel methodology to systematically collect and analyze standardized corpora of speech samples about others’ minds. Using this approach, I created a cross-linguistic corpus from English speakers in the United States, Mandarin speakers in China, and Arabic speakers in Morocco. This corpus was used across three studies to determine whether the frequency of mental state talk varied across languages and whether individual variation in the frequency of mental state talk was related to an underlying dimension of social cognition known as mindreading—the ability to infer others’ mental states. The first study analyzed the production of eight key mental state verbs theorized to be critical for mindreading development across field sites. However, this narrow focus overlooked much of the mental state lexicon. The second study addressed this limitation by coding all mental state terms in the corpus as identified by native speakers of each language. The third study examined whether participants’ frequency of mental state talk predicted their performance on the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET), a widely used measure of mindreading ability, and whether this relationship differed across languages. Three key findings emerged. First, the frequency of mental state talk was largely consistent across cultural-linguistic contexts, suggesting it may occur at a relatively fixed rate that is independent of cultural and linguistic variation. Second, mental state talk frequency significantly predicted RMET performance, though participant talkativeness was a slightly stronger predictor. Third, both factors were consistent positive predictors of RMET scores across all field sites. These findings suggest that the relationship between mental state talk and mindreading competence is less influenced by cross-cultural or cross-linguistic differences than previously thought. They also emphasize the importance of considering not only the specific content of mental state talk but also the broader linguistic context when studying social cognition. This work advances a more nuanced understanding of the interplay between language, culture, and our ability to understand others’ minds.