A test of advanced theory of mind (ToM), first introduced by F. Happe (1994), was adapted for children (mental, human, animal, and nature stories plus unlinked sentences). These materials were closely matched for difficulty and were presented to forty-five 7- to 12-year-olds with autism and 27 control children. Children with autism who showed ToM…

This study describes the development of social reasoning in school-age children. An irony task is used to assess 5-, 7-, and 9-year-olds' (N = 72) and adults' (N = 24) recursive understanding of others' minds. Guttman scale analysis demonstrates that in order to understand a speaker's communicative intention, a child needs to recognize the…

Three experiments investigated (1) whether developmental differences in the information integration rule apply to ulterior motive information; (2) whether such developmental differences are limited to situations involving parental reward; and (3) how related age differences among children can best be explained. (RH)

Children's comprehension and memory for different kinds of information in prose was assessed in two experiments. In the first experiment, 72 elementary school children listened to paragraphs and answered questions about explicit and implicit semantic relationships. The second experiment investigated the relationship between children's initial…

This study investigated 2-year-olds' understanding of others' intentions in a social learning context. After seeing a demonstration of how to open a box, children in two "No Prior Intention" conditions were less likely than those in "Prior Intention" conditions to open the box themselves when the adult unsuccessfully tried to open it. Results…

Infants of 14 months of age demonstrated significantly improved understanding of containment as a result of a training intervention in which they played with cans and tubes in their homes for a month. After training, their test scores were similar to those of untrained 20-month-old children. (RH)

In two experiments, large effects of variations in the form and timing of the cardinality question suggested that preschoolers' cardinality responses were situation-specific. Results suggested that children had no initial understanding of the relation between cardinality responses and numerosity. (RH)

The ability of three- and four-year-old children to reason about the components of event sequences involving simple transformations was tested in two experiments. In Experiment I children saw picture "stories" of the form object, instrument, and transformed object, with one item deleted. In Experiment II only the instrument item was…

In three experiments, children five- to 10-years-old were assessed on their comprehension of simple and compound comparatives using a picture-question answering task. Ability to use appropriate reference points increased with age on both the simple and compound comparative relations. (PCB)

Investigates whether children differentiate between the social-interactional, moral aspects of harm and the nonsocial, prudential aspects of harm. A total of 90 subjects 6, 8, and 10 years of age were administered an interview about two moral rules and one prudential rule. Three types of assessment were obtained: criterion judgments,…

Acquisition of sentient-nonsentient distinction in 48 children between four- and seven-years-of-age occurred later than animate-inanimate distinction. The children's use of naturalistic or nonnaturalistic explanations depended on the logical nature of events in which objects were involved rather than familiarity with objects themselves. Ability to…

Reveals that during the elementary school years, children acquire a firm understanding of the brain as the primary locus of psychological attributes and identity. The early school years, when children are five to seven years old, appear to be a transitional phase, when performance is variable and subject to task conditions. (RH)