Empathy entails basic cognitive processes such as the recognition of facial expressions and basic emotional processes such as emotional contagion, but also higher-order cognitive processes such as abstract reasoning about the other person's emotional states and higher-order emotional processes such as empathic concern. Thus, empathy must be…

Few Spanish language tools are available for assessing important social-emotional learning (SEL) skills. The present study presents evidence of the psychometric properties of a Spanish-language version of SELweb (SELweb-S), a web-based system for assessing children's ability to recognize others' emotions and perspectives, solve social problems,…

The purpose of this study was to examine the unique contributions of (social) cognitive skills such as inhibition, working memory, perspective taking, facial emotion recognition, and interpretation of situations to the variance in social information processing in children with mild to borderline intellectual disabilities. Respondents were 79…

The extreme parenting experiences encountered by children who are physically abused or neglected place them at increased risk for impaired socio-emotional development. There is growing evidence that maltreated children may apprehend interpersonal encounters in different ways from children without such traumatic histories. This systematic review…

Emotion understanding and theory of mind (ToM) are two major aspects of social cognition in which deaf children demonstrate developmental delays. The current study investigated these social cognition aspects in two subgroups of deaf children--those with cochlear implants who communicate orally (speakers) and those who communicate primarily using…

Seven schools in an economically challenged area of an urban school district in central California implemented mentored peer mediation programs under the guidance of a university-K-12 partnership project, Mediator Mentors. Individual student outcomes for social-cognitive dispositions, perceptions of school climate, conflict strategy choices, and…

This study examined parent-child emotion discourse, children's independent social information processing, and social skills outcomes in 146 families of 8-year-olds with and without developmental delays. Children's emergent social-cognitive understanding (internal state understanding, perspective taking, and causal reasoning and problem solving)…

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…

Seventy-two children were presented with a series of stories involving psychological harm in a game context. Found that older children were more likely than younger ones to base their evaluations on intentions, or both intentions and consequences, and to take into account the recipient's perspective. Game context interacted differentially with…

A review of the development of self and empathy in infancy in general is followed by discussion of atypical development, noting that autistic children have a general deficit in development of empathic capacity and physical and representational sense of self. Specific interventions to enhance the development of both sense of self and empathic…

Examined the association between attachment and emotional understanding in 2.5- to 6-year olds. Found that age and attachment security predicted a child's aggregate score on emotional understanding tasks. When the score was separated by valence of the emotion, attachment security and age predicted a child's score for only emotions with negative…

Two-year-old children's participation in family interaction was examined in two longitudinal observational studies of family conflict that focused on three developmental issues: children's understanding of the feelings and intentions of other family members, their understanding of social rules within the family, and the relation of emotional…

Used a life-world theoretical perspective as basis for examining how moral values and norms are expressed in interaction between Swedish toddlers and their preschool teachers or caregivers. Found that teachers/caregivers related morality to children's emotional and cognitive ability; to children's feelings of empathy, guilt, and shame; and to…

Describes a classroom-based research project that studied the development of social skills of eight heterogeneously grouped deaf students, ages 8 and 9. Activities that fostered empathy development are described, as well as ways students learned and applied an understanding of perspectives in communication exchanges, literacy development, and…

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…