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…

Theory of mind (ToM) allows people to understand their own and others' behaviour, crediting it with intentions, desires and beliefs. In the case of parenting, maternal reflective function unfolds within child-caregiver interactions, and previous studies have pointed out this variable as necessary for positive care. In the present study we sought…

This study was conducted with the aim to design a parenting training program based on cognitive-emotional mediation and evaluating the effectiveness of this program on increasing mothers' literacy of interaction and children's cognitive modifiability in the field of metacognition and theory of mind. The curriculum was designed with a combination…

Oral retelling portrays what one understands from reading or listening to a text. The retold stories of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often show macrostructural (overall story structure) difficulties. The study's purpose was to compare macrostructure oral story retelling, after reading (visual modality) or listening (auditory…

The aim of this study was to test the relationship of theory of mind (ToM) and maternal emotional expressiveness with children's aggressive behaviours (i.e., relational aggression, physical aggression). ToM is vital to relational aggression, which involves harming others through purposeful manipulation and damaging peer relationships. However,…

Mental state terms are believed to be closely related to the development of Theory of Mind (ToM). This study focuses on mental state verbs (MSVs) and investigates how they are used by Japanese-speaking mother-child dyads compared to their English-speaking counterparts. Analyses of their spontaneous speech from the CHILDES archives show that…

Listening narrative comprehension is a complex process that requires the processing of explicit (i.e., information presented in the text) and implicit information (i.e., information inferable from the text) and involves several linguistic and cognitive skills. However, the specific role of these skills in children's comprehension remains unclear.…

Objectives: This paper investigates the associations of social competence with cognitive representation and communication skills in children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), by measuring these skills in an expansive way through assessing both mental and internal-state understanding, and verbal and non-verbal communication. Methods: The data…

Two studies are presented to examine whether and why 3-5-year-olds in Pakistan display limited social understanding. Study 1 tested 71 preschoolers on Lillard and Flavell's (1992) test of desires, pretence and beliefs, plus two false belief tasks, and showed very limited understanding across these measures even though almost half were over 5 years…

This study investigated the prospective relationship between preschoolers' theory of mind (ToM) skills and academic school readiness, while exploring the possible moderator role played by child gender. The participants were 75 children who were assessed at two time points: when enrolled in the second preschool year (T1) and again 4 months before…

In 2 cross-lagged, longitudinal studies we contrasted parental talk about want in a single context versus multiple contexts. Study 1 examined thirty-two 2 year olds, with mothers describing pictures to children. Mothers could use want in zero, one, or multiple contexts. Children whose mothers used want in multiple contexts experienced a…

Recent research has shown that parents, through conversations during shared book reading, play a pivotal role in promoting children's social cognition, particularly their theory of mind (ToM). This study compared mothers' mental-state discourse during two kinds of interactions with their children--storybook reading and wordless storybook telling.…

It is argued that self-regulation skill is necessary both for displaying constructive behaviour and for controlling negative social behaviour, and self-regulation might affect social behaviours by increasing the ability to understand others' minds. In this research, in order to examine different aspects of self-regulation and their similarities…

This investigation was aimed at studying the relations between executive functions (EFs) and categorical emotion understanding while controlling for preschoolers' IQ, language ability and theory of mind (ToM). Specifically, we wanted to analyse the association between emotion understanding and set shifting, due to the lack of studies with this EF.…

This study examined the relationship between "theory of mind" and attachment-related anxiety and avoidance in adolescence. The "Reading the Mind in the Eyes" test and the "Experiences in Close Relationships--Relationship Structures" questionnaires were administered to 402 14-19 year-old adolescents. Contrary to…