The development of a mind-reading ability, known as theory-of-mind (ToM), has been recognized as following a universal process, but the age at which the false-belief task is passed has been reported to have wide inter-group variabilities. Japanese children have been reported to acquire a false-belief understanding at a slightly older age than…

The dichotomy between explicit and implicit theory of mind remains controversial. This study proposed a developmental and social-constructionist perspective that challenges this notion through a model showing that coordination of perspectives (CoP) is a continuously developing ability in children. Our tested model comprises eight distinct…

Perspective taking is a fundamental skill that helps us to understand others' thoughts, feelings and perceptions. Past studies have shown that there were significant relations between young children's perspective taking abilities and age, gender, formal schooling and socioeconomic status. The present study was conducted to investigate the…

The purpose of this research was to investigate the relationship between temperament and social cognition, including theory of mind and emotion understanding, in 34 preschool-aged children (aged 3-4 years). Theory of mind was measured with a belief-desire reasoning assessment, and emotion understanding was measured with an affective…

Perspective taking, defined as the ability to take on the visual, cognitive, and affective perspective of others, is considered a highly adaptive skill, vital for the child's social, intellectual, and emotional development. This article provides a critical analysis of scientific psychological literature from 1995 to the present on the main methods…

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…

Young children struggle in the classic tests of appearance versus reality. In the current Study 1, 3-year-olds had to determine which of 2 objects (a deceptive or a nondeceptive one) an adult requested when asking for the "real X" versus "the one that looks like X." In Study 2, children of the same age had to indicate what a single deceptive…

A critical skill in emergent writing is the developing ability to take the perspective of different readers; however, the precursors of this skill have not yet been identified. In this longitudinal study, 105 children (90 after attrition) were tested at 3 time points: pre-kindergarten (3-4 years old, n = 105), kindergarten (5 years old, n = 97),…

Upon learning the outcome to a problem, people tend to believe that they knew it all along ("hindsight bias"). Here, we report the first study to trace the development of hindsight bias across the life span. One hundred ninety-four participants aged 3 to 95 years completed 3 tasks designed to measure visual and verbal hindsight bias. All age…