We examine the long-standing claim that understanding relational correspondence is a general component of representational understanding. Two experiments with 175 preschool children located in Norwich, United Kingdom, examined the use of a scale model comparing performances on a "copy" task, measuring abstract spatial arrangement…

In order to comfort others, children need to exhibit Theory of Mind (ToM) skills. The goal of the present study was to investigate the role of ToM in association with children's spontaneous comforting behaviour in a laboratory task. Forty-seven children between 26 and 57 months of age completed three ToM tasks: diverse desires, diverse beliefs and…

The aim of this research was to develop a new observation-based measure for assessing caregivers' mind-mindedness in the preschool years and investigate whether this measure could explain the link between mothers' early appropriate mind-related comments and children's later mentalizing abilities. The new measure was developed using a sample of…

Learning to write is a complex process involving linguistic, cognitive, and socio-emotional factors. From a developmental perspective, little research has explored the content of young children's writings in terms of specific cognitive skills such as Theory of Mind (TOM). This study explores how young children's writing may foster representations…

Autistic people have difficulties recalling episodic memories, including retrieving fewer or less specific and detailed memories compared to typically developing people. However, the ability to effectively recall episodic memories is crucial in many real-world contexts, such as the criminal justice system, medical consultations, and employment…

If a child asks a friend to play football and the friend replies, 'I have a cough', the requesting child must make a 'relevance inference' to determine the communicative intent. Relevance inferencing is a key component of pragmatics, that is, the ability to integrate social context into language interpretation and use. We tested which cognitive…

Perspective-taking plays an important role in daily life, allowing consideration of other people's perspectives and viewpoints. This study used a large sample of 265 community-based participants (aged 20-86 years) to examine changes in perspective-taking abilities--a component of "Theory of Mind"--across adulthood, and how these changes…

Many young people with autism spectrum disorder display 'challenging behaviours', characterised by externalising behaviour and self-injurious behaviours. These behaviours can have a negative impact on a young person's well-being, family environment and educational achievement. However, the development of effective interventions requires greater…

A cross-national descriptive research method was used to explore Turkish and English student teachers' views about intelligence, and the factors which shape them. The "Adult Version of The Implicit Theory of Intelligence Scale" [1], and the Turkish version of this scale [2] were used to investigate the views of 114 English and 201…

Previous research has shown that children aged 4-5 years, but not 2-3 years, show adult-like interference from a partner when performing a joint task (Milward, Kita, & Apperly, 2014). This raises questions about the cognitive skills involved in the development of such "corepresentation (CR)" of a partner (Sebanz, Knoblich, &…

The year 2016 marked the tenth anniversary of the death of John McGahern (born 1934), the widely acclaimed Irish author. There is a shared temper of mind and several common strands in the work of McGahern and that of the English philosopher, Michael Oakeshott (1900-1990). Despite the very different cultural environments in which they grew up and…

Motivation in science in school is a national issue but is often overlooked in educational reform (Usher, A., and N. Kober. 2012. "Student motivation -- An overlooked piece of school reform". Centre on Education Policy, Graduate School of Education and Human Development. The George Washington University). Despite new curriculum content…

This study aimed to extend Lee and Hobson's (1998) findings regarding self-conceptualisation in autism by using a more verbally able sample. The study also investigated the ability to conceptualise self through other. Sixteen typically developing and sixteen adolescents with ASD matched for chronological and verbal mental age were administered a…

In this study of two hundred and thirty 8- to 13-year-olds, a new "Silent Films" task is introduced, designed to address the dearth of research on theory of mind in older children by providing a film-based analogue of F. G. E. Happe's (1994) Strange Stories task. Confirmatory factor analysis showed that all items from both tasks loaded…

The number of pupils with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) who join mainstream schools in the UK has been increasing over the last decade. Given the difficulties in social and emotional understanding which these children have, their inclusion in schools is likely to be challenging. Their ASD-related manifestations, moreover, tend to allow for…