How are mental state references represented in English and Japanese picture books? An analysis of the frequency of emotional and cognitive words and their relation to the self or others

The text of picture books is a fertile source through which young children learn about mental states. By focusing on English and Japanese books (N = 100; for children aged 3–5 years) as respective representatives of independent and interdependent cultures, the present study examined the cultural differences in the use of two types of mental state language: emotion and cognition. While our findings revealed no cultural differences in emotional word tokens or types, cognitive word tokens and types were higher in English picture books than in Japanese ones. Importantly, English picture books exhibited more self-oriented mental state references, while Japanese picture books had more other-oriented mental state references. Our study suggests that mental state references in picture books reflect culture-specific characteristics.