This 4-year study examined longitudinal interplays between adolescents' and mothers' self-reported empathic concern (EC) and perspective taking (PT). We investigated (a) whether adolescents' EC predicted rank-order change in their PT over time, or vice versa; (b) whether mothers' empathy predicted relative increases in adolescents' empathy; (c)…

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…