Links among concurrent and longitudinal changes in pubertal development and empathic ability from ages 10 to 13 and neural responses while witnessing peer rejection at age 13 were examined in 16 participants. More advanced pubertal development at age 13, and greater longitudinal increases in pubertal development, related to increased activity in…

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…

Classic theories of self-development suggest people define themselves in part through internalized perceptions of other people's beliefs about them, known as reflected self-appraisals. This study uses functional magnetic resonance imaging to compare the neural correlates of direct and reflected self-appraisals in adolescence (N = 12, ages 11-14…

Although "hindsight bias" (the "I knew it all along" phenomenon) has been documented in adults, its development has not been investigated. This is despite the fact that hindsight bias errors closely resemble the errors children make on theory of mind (ToM) tasks. Two main goals of the present work were to (a) create a battery of hindsight tasks…

Four experiments studied 4- to 6-year-old children's understanding of inferential reasoning as a source of knowledge. To assess understanding that knowledge of relevant premises leads to knowledge of the conclusion, children had to judge the knowledge of another person, who was presented to the child as being aware of two premises. (Author/BN)

Investigates the relationships among the first three stages of cognitive, role-taking, and moral development in both transitional and nontransitional subjects ages 5 to 14 years in order to determine whether the pattern of associations conformed more adequately to the "functional unity" model or to the "necessary but not…

Three experiments examined assumption that children attribute human properties to nonhuman agents. Two- to 8-year-olds participated in false-belief tests concerning human and various nonhuman agents, including animals and God, and in a modified perspective-taking task including nonhuman agents. Results suggested that children do not consistently…

Examined relation between early fantasy/pretense and knowledge about mental life in 3- and 4-year olds. Found that performance on theory of mind tasks was significantly intercorrelated when effects of verbal intelligence and age were statistically controlled. Individual differences in fantasy/pretense were related to theory of mind performance in…

The development of perspective taking was explored in kindergarten and second grade children using a referential communication task. (BRT)

Development of gender understanding in preschool age children was studied over eight months. Understanding appeared to follow an orderly sequence according to the person referred to: first, when the self was the referent; second, when a same-sex other; third, when an opposite-sex other. (Author/DB)

Examines the ability to differentiate appearance-reality and Level Two perspective-taking in tactile modality among a total of 92 children aged two-four years in three studies. The results indicate that three-year-olds find tactile appearance-reality and Level Two perspective-taking tasks easier than visual ones. (RJC)

Preoperational and concrete-operational first and second graders performed on a training task and a generalization task prior to and after serving in one of five instructional groups. The instructional groups were: no-training control, specific self-instruction, specific didactic control, general self-instruction and general didactic control.…

Describes two experiments that examined children's understanding of the distinction between real and apparent emotion. Discusses the findings in relation to research concerning children's concept of mind, their grasp of the appearance-reality distinction; their ability to produce complex, embedded justifications; and their ideas about emotion.…

Examined judgments of intolerance given by children, adolescents, and adults toward disagreeing others. The evidence suggested that intolerance may be a lower level of reasoning in a social cognitive developmental progression. (Author/DB)