This study examined punishment of excluders and compensation of victims after observing an instance of social exclusion at various phases of adolescent development. Participants (n = 183; age 9 to 22 years) were first included in a virtual ball-tossing game, Cyberball, and then "observed" the exclusion of a peer. Subsequently, they…

This research examined links among academic ability, social-perspective coordination, and friendship quality, within the context of gifted adolescents' friendships. The sample consisted of 120 early adolescents (59 girls, 61 boys), 81 of whom were identified as gifted. Academic ability, sex, and grade significantly predicted social-perspective…

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…

Patterns of development of ToM belief abilities in intellectually disabled (ID) children and typically developing (TD) children matched on their developmental age were investigated. The links between cognition, language, social understanding and ToM belief abilities were examined. EDEI-R [Perron-Borelli M. (1996). "Echelles Differentielles…

Preschool children were required to discriminate and explain the differing feelings of each story character in two kinds of stories: (1) those in which cues for correct responses were located in the situation, and (2) those in which correct explanations required consideration of the characters' subjective characteristics. (Author/SS)

Concludes that there are reliable relationships between altruism and perceptual, social, and moral perspective taking. Results concerning the relationship between empathy and altruism are nonsignificant overall, but it is suggested that a reliable association between empathy and altruism develops over time and is found in adults. (Author/RH)

Investigates two levels of the spontaneous inference of thinking in others (nonrecursive and recursive) in children of ages 10, 12, 14 and 16 using a person description task. (Author/SS)

This study assessed social perspective taking in 57 children classified as educable mentally retarded divided into 3 age groups from 8-16 years. Significant differences in social perspective taking were obtained between the three groups in understanding individuals and between the older and two younger groups in understanding friendship.…

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)

Investigated the general relationship between children's performance on social and physical measures of cognitive functioning, possible sex differences in performance on the two types of tasks, and the relationship between boys' and girls' performances on these tasks and age and IQ. (SDH)

This study investigated the interrelationships among the development of role-taking skills, moral judgments, and sharing behavior of boys and girls in K-3. A total of 160 lower middle class white children (20 boys and 20 girls from each grade) participated in the study. Data were collected on four measures: (1) sharing candy with a friend, (2)…

This paper describes a one-year longitudinal follow up study of the long term effects of role taking training procedures (in which children assumed a number of perspectives) on children's social and cognitive behaviors. Longitudinal and cross-sectional age effects were also analyzed. In an earlier study the effect of two types of role-taking…

Evaluates fourth-to seventh-grade children on two aspects of social cognition: interpersonal understanding and means-ends problem-solving ability. Relates the two variables to sex, age, IQ, social class, and multiple dimensions of competence. Both variables significantly correlated with I.Q. while interpersonal understanding also correlated with…

Two studies explored preschool, second-, and fifth-grade children's moral and dispositional judgments as influenced by an actor's efforts. Findings indicated that older children's judgments and predictions reflected coordination of the actor's effort with information about the actor's anticipated goal. Preschool children focused more on the…