Emotion comprehension (EC), theory of mind (ToM), and language are particularly important aspects of child development. In recent years, there has been increasing interest in understanding how these three variables are related to preschool children. However, results have been contradictory, and it is not clear how EC, ToM, and language are…

This study examined children's understanding of irony when a difference existed between a speaker's intended meaning and a listener's interpretation of the meaning. Three irony contexts were presented to 87 7/8-year-olds (second graders), 90 11/12-year-olds (sixth graders), and 103 adults. In the normal irony context, the speaker intended to…

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 compared pronoun use in individuals with autism to their typically developing peers via meta-analysis and systematic review of 20 selected articles to examine differences in overall pronoun usage as well as in personal, ambiguous, possessive, reflexive, and clitic pronoun usage. Summary effects indicated significant differences between…

Substitute object pretense is one of the earliest-developing forms of pretense, and yet it changes considerably across the preschool years. By 3.5 years of age, children can pretend with substitutes that are highly dissimilar from their intended referents (Elder & Pederson, 1978), but even older children have difficulty understanding such…

Mothers' mental-state references predict individual differences in preschoolers' false-belief (FB) understanding; less is known about the origins of corresponding variation in school-age children. To address this gap, 105 children completed observations with their mothers at child ages 2 and 6, three FB tasks and a verbal comprehension…

This study examined the development of children's reasoning about the afterlife and its relationship with parental afterlife beliefs and testimony. A total of 123 children aged 5, 7, and 10 years were read a story describing the events that led to a person's death. After hearing the story, children were asked questions about the dead agent's…

Happe (1993) proposed that theory of mind (ToM) understanding was necessary for comprehension of metaphorical expressions. The current study investigated the role of both ToM and language ability in metaphor understanding. Ninety-four children aged 8-15 years with communication impairments were grouped according to language ability and autistic…