The general public's acceptance of quarantined individuals back into society during a pandemic is key to the psychological adaptation of such individuals after their quarantine. Therefore, we designed an empathy learning programme, implemented on a virtual network platform, that targeted unquarantined individuals and was designed to promote…

Perceivers of other minds often overestimate the similarity between their own and other people's perspectives. This egocentric projection during perspective-taking is argued to originate from perceivers' tendency to use their own perspective as a referential anchor from which they insufficiently adjust away to account for an alternative…

Recent studies suggest that there appears to be a similar developmental sequence in the understanding of mental states in both internal-state language and in standard theory-of-mind tasks. These findings suggest possible developmental relations between children's ability to talk and think about the mind. Two experiments investigated the concurrent…

Qualitative differences in social interaction style exist "within" the autism spectrum. In this study we examined whether these differences are associated with (1) the severity of autistic symptoms and comorbid disruptive behavior problems, (2) the child's psycho-social health, and (3) executive functioning and perspective taking skills. The…

After reading a detailed account of a serious mistake in which a similar-age other went against personal values or a prior commitment, undergraduates rated their feelings of dissonance (regret, hypocrisy, and stupidity) had they been in the actor's place. Relative to a control condition, reading relevant proverbs such as "everybody makes mistakes"…

Two scales were used to measure the cognitive (Hogan's Empathy Scale) and emotional (Questionnaire Measure of Emotional Empathy) components of empathy. Results indicated that incarcerated child molesters (N=29) were, relative to nonoffenders, deficient in both the cognitive and emotional components of generalized empathy. Theoretical and treatment…

A study investigated some of the ways in which phenomena are perceived and translated into speech, especially in the assignment of agents in a given situation. Subjects were 16 adults with infant children. The adults were shown the Visual Cliff series of pictures of an infant crawling to its mother across a glass sheet covering an open space with…

Many educators assume that close links between schooling and everyday experience are necessary for students to be motivated and to learn. That assumption should be reconsidered. To promote equality of opportunity and to develop scientific understanding, schools should help students break with everyday experience. Cognitive researchers recognize…

A modified replication of a study by R. C. Anderson and J. W. Pichert indicates that, even though the retrieval framework can operate selectively in making certain information more accessible for output, it is ultimately constrained by the accessibility of information as determined by the encoding framework. (JD)

Examines whether affective perspective taking (the ability to identify and understand another person's feelings) plays a more significant role in altruistic helping than does cognitive perspective taking (the ability to recognize and understand the thoughts of others). This hypothesis is supported by the results of an experiment pairing videotape…