This study examined the performance of 16 children (ages 4 through 12) with visual impairments on tasks designed to assess their understanding of false belief, a central aspect of social understanding. The development of understanding of another's false belief was found to be delayed in children with severe visual impairments. (Author/SW)

This study examined the presuppositional skills of 5 verbal autistic children (ages 7-12). Results revealed that subjects demonstrated some social-cognitive knowledge of others as reflected in quantitative and qualitative modifications in language relative to naive and knowledgeable listener contexts. (Author/JDD)

We examined social role-taking and moral judgement improvement after an educational group-oriented intervention emphasizing guided reflection and role-taking dimensions among 11 groups, made up of a total of 61 female and male Italian university students. They were compared to a control group of 59 students. We twice applied Italian adaptations of…

Reports that beliefs about truth and anxiety over the Cold War period shaped the art of political cartoonists of the 1950s. (FL)

Using the example of a Navajo student teacher late for the first day of mentoring, steps are presented that enable parties with divergent perspectives to prevent or resolve conflicts by gaining second-person perspective, establishing a calm reflective ambiance, and seeking points of convergence. Presents 10 elements for reaching higher ground in…

Thirty children (ages 8-12) with language impairment (LI) and 30 children with normal language development (NL) were presented with role-playing situations that required the construction of tactful messages, and their responses were coded to reflect tactfulness. The LI children gave significantly less tactful messages than the NL children.…

This study assessed social perspective taking in 57 children classified as educable mentally retarded divided into 3 age groups from 8-16 years. Significant differences in social perspective taking were obtained between the three groups in understanding individuals and between the older and two younger groups in understanding friendship.…

A study examined whether three children with autism could be trained in conversational skills and whether this would lead to changes in standard tests of theory of mind. The amount of shared interest exhibited by the children during conversations increased during training sessions and children made more responses that were appropriate. (Contains…

The variety of terms used to describe the process of self-other differentiation in communication--empathy, role taking, decentering, and perspective taking are but a few--tend to undermine efforts to establish a consistent framework for research in this area. A review of these terms suggests that decentering is the broadest of the concepts,…

Two separate studies suggest that the development of positive sibling relations may be related to siblings' social-cognitive skills (Stewart & Marvin, 1984) and the nature of mothers' conversations with their children (Dunn & Kendrick, 1982). The purpose of the present study was to provide a synthesis of these two studies and to demonstrate the…

Investigates relations among young preschoolers' social cognitive abilities, expression of emotions, and prosocial responses to others' emotions. Results suggested that subjects' social cognitive acuity and differential responding to emotion have heretofore been underrated. (Author/DR)

This article examines how participants in an interview use different linguistic and social resources in order to construct multiple, complex self-representations. It discusses interviews from a critical discourse perspective. In particular, it suggests that interviews are sites of struggle where individuals strive to construct representations of…

Examined the relationship between self-esteem discrepancies and depression in a long-term intimate relationship. Findings supported the hypothesis that depression is associated with discrepancies between married partners' self-appraisals, perceptions of spouse's appraisal, and spouse's actual appraisal. (Author/DB)

Seventy-two children were presented with a series of stories involving psychological harm in a game context. Found that older children were more likely than younger ones to base their evaluations on intentions, or both intentions and consequences, and to take into account the recipient's perspective. Game context interacted differentially with…

This paper argues for civic education that helps students recognize that reasonable people will disagree about the best ways to live, and that this recognition should frequently impel us toward compromise and accommodation in the public square. Fostering this virtue of reasonable disagreement will require a concerted curricular effort toward…