Superstitious behaviors persist across time, culture, and age. Although often considered irrational and even potentially harmful, superstitions have recently been shown to have positive effects on stress levels, confidence, and ultimately, performance. However, it remains unclear how people conceive of superstitious behaviors, specifically,…

Multidimensional theory of mind assessments should include items assessing both explicit theory of mind (theory of mind knowledge) and applied theory of mind (application of theory of mind knowledge in real-life contexts). However, the two theory of mind scores cannot be interpreted collectively to identify children having mismatched explicit and…

The present study aimed to examine whether Mandarin-speaking children on the autism spectrum showed differences in comprehending spatial demonstratives ("this" and "that", and "here" and "there"), as compared to typically developing (TD) children. Another aim of this study was to investigate the roles of…

Autism spectrum condition (ASC) is characterized by atypical attention to eyes and faces, but the onset and impact of these atypicalities remain unclear. This prospective longitudinal study examined face perception in infants who develop ASC (N = 22, female = 5, 100% White) compared with typically developing infants (N = 131, female = 65, 55.6%…

Purpose: This study investigated irony comprehension by Mandarin-speaking children with cochlear implants, focusing on how prosodic and visual cues contribute to their comprehension, and whether second-order Theory of Mind is required for using these cues. Method: We tested 52 Mandarin-speaking children with cochlear implants (aged 3-7 years) and…

Research Findings: This study extends the understanding of the sibling effect on children's theory of mind (ToM) among Chinese preschoolers by adopting an ecological perspective. The participants were 225 Chinese preschoolers, comprising 100 children with siblings (M[subscript age] = 4.54 years, SD = 1.11, 55 boys) and 125 children without…

Previous research on children's knowledge about the mind has primarily focused on their comprehension of false beliefs, leaving the conceptualization of thoughts and thinking less explored. To address this gap, we developed a new assessment tool, the interview about the mind (IaM), to assess children's understanding of the mind. Two studies…