The purpose of this study was to specify the development of and links between executive functioning and theory of mind during middle childhood. One hundred four 7- to 12-year-old children completed a battery of age-appropriate tasks measuring working memory, inhibition, flexibility, theory of mind, and vocabulary. As expected, spatial working…

We investigated "scalar implicature" in adolescents and children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to test whether theory of mind deficits associated with autism affect pragmatic inferences in language. We tested scalar implicature computation in adolescents with ASD (12-18 years) and asked whether they reason about mental states when…

Background: Two experiments investigated the contribution of conflict inhibition to pragmatic deficits in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Typical adults' tendency to reuse interlocutors' referential choices (lexical alignment) implicates communicative perspective-taking, which is regulated by conflict inhibition. We examined whether…

The goal of the current study was to statistically evaluate the reliable scalability of a set of tasks designed to assess Theory of Mind (ToM) without language as a confounding variable. This tool might be useful to study ToM in populations where language is impaired or to study links between language and ToM. Low verbal versions of the ToM tasks…

The vast majority of studies on theory of mind (ToM) have focused on the preschool years. Extending the developmental scope of ToM research presents opportunities to both reassess theoretical accounts of ToM and test its predictive utility. The twin aims of this longitudinal study were to examine developmental relations between ToM, executive…

The present commentary considers the theoretical and applied implications of Froh, Bono, and colleagues' benefit-appraisals intervention to promote gratitude among youth. First, we discuss the developmental competencies that children need to master before they can benefit from this intervention. The target curriculum was successful among 8- to…

This is the first comprehensive clinical introduction to using a time-limited mentalizing approach for working with children, ages 5 to 12, who experience emotional and behavioral problems, including anxiety, depression, and relational difficulties. Mentalization-based treatment (MBT) promotes a child's ability to make sense of their own mind, and…

How children understand the concepts of teaching and learning is inherently underpinned by their mental state understanding and critical to the successful transition to formal schooling. Knowledge is a private representational mental state; learning is a knowledge change process that can be either intentional or not; and teaching is an intentional…

Understanding the underpinnings of social responsiveness and theory of mind (ToM) will enhance our knowledge of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). We hypothesize that higher-order relational reasoning (higher-order RR: reasoning necessitating integration of relationships among multiple variables) is necessary but not sufficient for ToM, and that…

Children vary in their ability to use language in social contexts and this has important consequences for wellbeing. We review studies that test whether individual differences in pragmatic skill are associated with formal language ability, mentalizing, and executive functions in both typical and atypical development. The strongest and most…

Children learn novel information using various methods, and one of the most common is human pedagogical communication or teaching--the purposeful imparting of information from one person to another. Neuro-typically developing (TD) children gain the ability to recognize and understand teaching as a core method for acquiring knowledge from others.…

The objectives of this study were to examine (a) differences in figurative language, analogical reasoning, executive functions (EF), theory of mind (ToM), and local/ central coherence (LCC) of children with high-functioning autism (HFA; n 32) and typically developing (TD; n 32) children; (b) improvement of figurative language using dynamic…

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, &…

This longitudinal study examined pragmatic language in boys and girls with Down syndrome (DS) at up to three time points, using parent report, standardized and direct assessments. We also explored relationships among theory of mind, executive function, nonverbal mental age, receptive and expressive vocabulary, grammatical complexity, and pragmatic…

Most individuals with autism spectrum disorders often fail in tasks of theory of mind (ToM). However, those with normal intellectual functioning known as high functioning ASD (HF-ASD) sometimes succeed in mentalizing inferences. Some tools have been developed to more accurately test their ToM abilities. The aims of this study were to examine the…