First-order theory of mind (ToM) development has shown to conform to a Guttman scale, with desire reasoning developing before belief reasoning. There have been attempts to test for internal consistency and scalability in advanced ToM, but not over a broad age range and only with a limited set of tasks. This 2-year longitudinal study (N = 155;…

While age effects in reaction time (RT) tasks across the lifespan are well established for level of performance, analogous findings have started appearing also for indicators of intra-individual variability (IIV). Children are not only slower, but also display more variability than younger adults in RT. Yet, little is known about potential…

This investigation was aimed at studying the relations between executive functions (EFs) and categorical emotion understanding while controlling for preschoolers' IQ, language ability and theory of mind (ToM). Specifically, we wanted to analyse the association between emotion understanding and set shifting, due to the lack of studies with this EF.…

This study examined the independence and interplay between cognitive risk factors (poor executive function/emotion understanding) and maternal risk factors (low education/high depression) for preschool problem behaviors, indexed by multi-measure, multi-informant (mother/teacher/ researcher) ratings. A socio-economically diverse sample of 235…

This study examined the concurrent and predictive relations between infant attention skills, joint attention, and emotion regulation. Infants' gaze following skills and duration of orienting were assessed at 6 months of age, and collaborative joint attention and emotion regulation skills were assessed at 24 months of age. The results indicated…