Research Findings: Emotion knowledge (EK) enables children to identify emotions in themselves and others, and its development facilitates emotion recognition in complex social situations. Sociocognitive processes, such as theory of mind (ToM), may contribute to developing EK by helping children realize the inherent variability associated with…

A total of 69 preschool children were tested on measures of false belief understanding (the Unexpected Transfer task), inhibitory control (the Grass/Snow task), and strategic reasoning (the Windows task). For each task, children indicated their response either by pointing with their index finger or by using a nonstandard response mode (pointing…

This study investigated the longitudinal relation between children's theory of mind and their metacognitive knowledge with a special focus on the impact of language on this relation. Measures of theory-of-mind understanding and metamemory knowledge were assessed in 133 3-year-old children at 4 measurement points separated by half-year intervals.…

The relationship between theory of mind, material altruism, and family context was examined. Forty-one preschool children (16 females and 25 males) enrolled in a private school participated in the study. Results of this study showed no relationship between theory of mind and altruism. There were no significant correlations between theory of mind…

This prospective longitudinal study provides evidence of preschool-age precursors of hostile attribution bias in young school-age children, a topic that has received little empirical attention. We examined multiple risk domains, including laboratory and observational assessments of children's social-cognition, general cognitive functioning,…

Consecutive retestings of 92 U.S. preschoolers (n = 30), Chinese preschoolers (n = 31), and deaf children (n = 31) examined whether the sequences of development apparent in cross-sectional results with a theory-of-mind scale also appeared in longitudinal assessment. Longitudinal data confirmed that theory-of-mind progressions apparent in…

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…

The aim of this study was to assess the specific relation between 3- to 6-year-olds' performance on a task measuring executive function (EF), the Dimensional Change Card Sort task (DCCS), and different developmental attainments in their theory of mind (ToM) by employing a battery of scaled ToM tasks that were comparable in task format and task…

Using an experimental approach, our study examined the differentiated effects on pre-schoolers' social cognition of two short-term social information processing (SIP) and Theory of Mind (ToM) training sessions dealing with emotions and beliefs. The links between ToM, SIP, and social adjustment or externalizing behavior were examined. 47…

Executive function mechanisms underpinning language-related effects on theory of mind understanding were examined in a sample of 165 preschoolers. Verbal labels were manipulated to identify relevant perspectives on an explicit false belief task. In Experiment 1 with 4-year-olds (N = 74), false belief reasoning was superior in the fully and…

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…

Temperament dimensions influence children's approach to and participation in social interactive experiences which reflect and impact children's social understandings. Therefore, temperament differences might substantially impact theory-of-mind development in early childhood. Using longitudinal data, we report that certain early temperament…

Children with hearing loss are increasingly being identified at an early age and receiving family-centered intervention from infancy. This means that they are more likely to follow typical developmental sequences of learning. Therefore, professionals working with them need to be aware of developments in the scholarly literature that drive…

Happe and Loth (2002) describe word learning as a "privileged domain" in the development of a theory of mind. We test this claim in a series of experiments based on the Sally-Anne paradigm. Three- and 4-year-old children's ability to represent others' false beliefs was investigated in tasks that required the child either to predict the actions of…

This study aimed to investigate whether: (1) the development of "theory of mind" (ToM) is associated with social competence; and (2) social peer play is also associated with social competence in young children. Associations between ToM task performance, frequencies of observed social and solitary free-play and parent-rated social…