Drawing on cognitive criticism, and using Theory of Mind, transportation, and imaginative resistance as a framework, this essay analyzes the ways in which Leigh Bardugo's Six of Crows Duology, can build understanding of and empathy for people with living with mental illnesses. Maria Nikolajeva's germinal work on cognitive approaches to literature…

Research Findings: Although crucial in early childhood, social and emotional learning (SEL) was seldom integrated in preschool classrooms until recently. This study reports the implementation and evaluation of an SEL program devised to assist Chinese preschoolers, a population that has been understudied. With cultural values/practices impacting…

Scientific literature indicates that theory of mind (ToM) is less strongly associated with peer acceptance (PA) in the case of boys and the case of negative nominations. This study hypothesizes that these two effects of ToM on PA could be an epiphenomenon of counterfactual reasoning (CFR). Fifty-three 3-5-year-olds participated in this study. The…

Theory of Mind (ToM) is an individual's ability to understand the cognitive states of others, including their desires, beliefs, and knowledge. ToM describes how children, by the age of four, understand how others may be thinking or feeling. It is the ability to understand the thinking or viewpoints of their peers. This paper will describe ToM…

Lying is a prevalent and normative behavior in young children. Conceptually, it is strongly linked with children's theory-of-mind development. However, empirical studies show that the link between children's lying and theory-of-mind is heterogeneous. This study examined whether parental control and parental warmth moderate the link between…

Purpose: This article demonstrates the reach of Tuhiwai Smith's ideas across Pacific research. It discusses the theoretical and practical influence of her seminal work "Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples" through "holographic epistemology", an indigenous way of viewing knowledge.…

Theory of Mind (ToM), a central feature of social cognition, impacts social functioning and academic competencies. Yet, the interplay of ToM and self-concept in academic context remains unknown. This study examines how ToM shapes adolescents' academic self-concept and its association with academic competence, while considering the role of gender…

While face masks provide necessary protection against disease spread, they occlude the lower face parts (chin, mouth, nose) and consequently impair the ability to accurately perceive facial emotions. Here we examined how wearing face masks impacted making inferences about emotional states of others (i.e., affective theory of mind; Experiment 1)…

Both theory of mind (ToM) and executive functioning have been related to children's academic abilities. In a longitudinal study with 112 children, we investigated the influence of these two abilities on children's math and reading performance at 7 years of age. We found that math performance was predicted by concurrent working memory as well as by…

The relation between cognition and life satisfaction is shaped by several factors. The present research investigated whether mindreading skills are linked to subjective well-being and anxiety during the transition into adolescence. Specifically, our aim was to investigate individual differences in those constructs and gendered relational patterns.…

This study examined the cognitive predictors and constraints of children's strategic offers in the Ultimatum Game. The Ultimatum Game is a one-shot negotiation on the division of a given sum of rewards between two people, where the receiver has the right to punish the proposer by rejecting unfair offers, which results in nil reward for either…

According to current accounts of social cognition, the emergence of verbal and non-verbal components of social perception might rely on the acquisition of different cognitive abilities. These components might be differently sensitive to the pattern of neuropsychological impairments in congenital neurodevelopmental disorders. Here, we explored the…

When deciding whether to explore, agents must consider both their need for information and its cost. Do children recognize that exploration reflects a trade-off between action costs and expected information gain, inferring epistemic states accordingly? In two experiments, 4- and 5-year-olds (N = 144; of diverse race and ethnicity) judge that an…

Recent debates over adults' theory of mind use have been fueled by surprising failures of perspective-taking in communication, suggesting that perspective-taking may be relatively effortful. Yet adults routinely engage in effortful processes when needed. How, then, should speakers and listeners allocate their resources to achieve successful…

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…