Reading comprehension difficulties exhibited by children with autism are related to executive function (EF) and theory of mind (ToM) deficits. However, the potential heterogeneity of ToM, EF, and reading comprehension abilities, and their interrelationships, among Chinese children with autism remains unclear. Using comprehensive sets of ToM and EF…

This study examined the cognitive predictors and constraints of children's strategic offers in the Ultimatum Game. The Ultimatum Game is a one-shot negotiation on the division of a given sum of rewards between two people, where the receiver has the right to punish the proposer by rejecting unfair offers, which results in nil reward for either…

To successfully pull a practical joke on someone, children need to understand that their victims do not know what they themselves know, be able to intentionally manipulate others' beliefs, and maintain a straight face to safeguard the integrity of the joke. This study examined the relationship between children's developing theory of mind (ToM),…

This study examined the relation between Theory of Mind (ToM) and reading comprehension in 42 7- to 9-year-old Hong Kong Chinese children with autism and 55 typically developing peers (TD) who were comparable in age, nonverbal intelligence, and working memory. Relative to their TD peers, children with autism exhibited difficulties with reading…

It has been debated whether the progressive emergence of theory of mind (ToM) in autistic children is compatible with a "delayed" or "different" development model, and whether and how the sequential consolidation of ToM concepts is subject to cross-cultural variations in autistic and typically developing (TD) children. To study…

This study of 241 parent-child dyads from the United Kingdom (N = 120, M[subscript age] = 3.92, SD = 0.53) and Hong Kong (N = 121, M[subscript age] = 3.99, SD = 0.50) breaks new ground by adopting a cross-cultural approach to investigate children's theory of mind and parental mind-mindedness. Relative to the Hong Kong sample, U.K. children showed…

This study aims to deliver a school-based mode of training for in-service teachers of students with ASD in Hong Kong. The training is delivered following the phases of implementation science, namely, exploration, installation, and implementation. The project team used the theory of mind approach, which enables teachers to engage with students with…

The study seeks to understand the relation between preschool children's mode of participation and negotiation strategies during play and their theory of mind (ToM) development in the Hong Kong context. Forty-two 5-year-old children were recruited. Their emotional and cognitive ToMs were assessed along with expressive language ability. Children's…

This study examined the interrelationships among second-order belief, interpretive theory of mind, inhibitory control, and the understanding of strategic versus white lies in 54 children approximately 5 years 7 months old. Results showed that second-order belief was associated with strategic-lie understanding, whereas interpretive theory of mind…

English-speaking children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are less capable of using prosodic cues such as intonation for irony comprehension. Prosodic cues, in particular intonation, in Cantonese are relatively restricted while sentence-final particles (SFPs) may be used for this pragmatic function. This study investigated the use of prosodic…