The current study's aim was to assess the contribution of empathic perspective-taking to the relationship between attachment security and children's risk of maladjustment. A sample of 212 preschoolers aged 3-5 years old was included in this study. Children completed the Attachment Story Completion Task and a modified version of the Kids' Empathic…

The purpose of this study was to identify predictors of friendship quality in adolescents with and without ADHD. The participants were 115 adolescents (61 ADHD, 54 non-ADHD), ages 13-18. The adolescents completed questionnaires assessing the quality of their relationships with their best friends, social perspective taking, anxiety and depression.…

Basic perspective taking and mentalizing abilities develop in childhood, but recent studies indicate that the use of social perspective taking to guide decisions and actions has a prolonged development that continues throughout adolescence. Here, we aimed to replicate this research and investigate the hypotheses that individual differences in…

The study examined adolescents' emotional separation and detachment from parents, analyzing their relations with connectedness and agency, with some aspects of self-other boundary regulation and with problem behavior. The participants were 331 Italian adolescents, aged from 16 to 19 years (mean age = 17.40, SD = 1.14). Separation and detachment…

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…

This article presents results from two studies that included ethnically and socioeconomically diverse samples totaling 4,462 children in kindergarten through third grade. Each study examined the psychometric properties of a web-based, self-administered battery of assessments of socialemotional comprehension called "SELweb." Assessment…

Background: Empathy dysfunction is one of the hallmarks of psychopathy, but it is also sometimes thought to characterise autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Individuals with either condition can appear uncaring towards others. This study set out to compare and contrast directly boys with psychopathic tendencies and boys with ASD on tasks assessing…