Purpose: This study investigated irony comprehension by Mandarin-speaking children with cochlear implants, focusing on how prosodic and visual cues contribute to their comprehension, and whether second-order Theory of Mind is required for using these cues. Method: We tested 52 Mandarin-speaking children with cochlear implants (aged 3-7 years) and…

Research Findings: This study extends the understanding of the sibling effect on children's theory of mind (ToM) among Chinese preschoolers by adopting an ecological perspective. The participants were 225 Chinese preschoolers, comprising 100 children with siblings (M[subscript age] = 4.54 years, SD = 1.11, 55 boys) and 125 children without…

This study examined the effect of dialogic reading intervention on improving the theory of mind of rural Chinese children. A 12-week-randomized controlled trial design with two intervention groups, i.e. school practice intervention (SPI), parent-involved intervention (PII), and one control group with traditional reading intervention (TRI) that…

Understanding emotions based on false beliefs is a necessary component of theory of mind. Previous research has indicated a lag in children's understanding of belief-based emotions as compared to false beliefs. Experiment 1 involved 83 Chinese 3- to 5-year-old children who were tested for the developmental change of the belief-emotion lag.…

The development of emotion understanding in young Chinese preschoolers was examined. The overall developmental trend, as measured by the Test of Emotion Comprehension (TEC), proved similar to that found among preschoolers in Western Europe. However, Chinese children performed better at understanding the distinction between real and apparent…

Young children's ability to tell a strategic lie by making it consistent with the physical evidence of their transgression was investigated along with the sociocognitive correlates of such lie-telling behaviors. In Experiment 1, 247 Chinese children between 3 and 5 years of age (126 boys) were left alone in a room and asked not to lift a cup to…