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This study aims to conduct the Turkish adaptation, validity, and reliability study of the Theory of Mind Inventory-2 (TOMI-2) developed by Hutchins and Prelock (2016) for 3-5-year-old children. The study group consists of 310 mothers with children in the 3-5 age group in Konya city center. Personal Information Form and Theory of Mind Inventory-2 (TOMI-2) were used as data collection tools in the study. After the TOMI-2 was translated into Turkish, the normality assumption was checked with the "Shapiro-Wilk" test. The relationship between two continuous variables was evaluated with the Pearson Correlation Coefficient. Exploratory Factor Analysis, Confirmatory Factor Analysis, Content Validity, Criterion Validity, and Reliability analyses were also used in the study. The findings of the analyses show that the Turkish version of the TOMI-2 is a valid and reliable measurement tool for children aged 3-5, with 60 items in the original form.

Behavioral research demonstrates a critical transition in preschooler's mental-state understanding (i.e., theory of mind; ToM), revealed most starkly in performance on tasks about a character's false belief (e.g., about an object's location). Questions remain regarding the neural and cognitive processes differentiating children who pass versus fail behavioral false-belief tasks and the extent to which there is continuity versus change in the ToM neural network. To address these questions, we analyzed event-related spectral power in the electroencephalogram (EEG) to investigate how preschoolers' neural activity during passive viewing of false-belief scenarios related to their explicit behavioral ToM performance. We found that neural activity during passive viewing of false-belief events (6-9 Hz EEG 'alpha' suppression in right temporoparietal [RTP] electrodes) strongly related to children's explicit ToM. However, children's RTP alpha suppression differed depending on their explicit behavioral ToM performance: Children who did better on a broad battery of standard ToM tasks and who passed explicit behavioral false-belief tasks showed greater RTP alpha suppression when the character's belief first became false (during the 'location-change' event); whereas children who did worse on the ToM battery and who failed explicit behavioral false-belief tasks showed greater RTP alpha suppression only later when they could evaluate the character's behavior in the context of prior events (during the 'active-search' event). Findings shed light on what differentiates preschoolers who pass versus fail explicit false-belief tasks and raise questions about how to interpret existing neuroscience data from ToM tasks across infancy to adulthood.

The present study aimed to examine whether Mandarin-speaking children on the autism spectrum showed differences in comprehending spatial demonstratives ("this" and "that", and "here" and "there"), as compared to typically developing (TD) children. Another aim of this study was to investigate the roles of theory of mind (ToM) and executive functions (EF) in the comprehension of spatial demonstratives. Twenty-seven autistic children (mean age 6.86) and 27 receptive-vocabulary-matched TD children (mean age 5.82) were recruited. Demonstrative comprehension was assessed based on participants' ability to place objects in certain locations according to experimenters' instructions which involved these demonstratives in three different conditions (same-, opposite-, and spectator-perspective conditions). Four false-belief tasks were administered to measure ToM, and the word-span task and the dimensional change card sort task were used to measure two subcomponents of EF -- working memory and mental flexibility -- respectively. Children on the autism spectrum were found to score below TD children in the comprehension of spatial demonstratives. In addition, the results showed that ToM and working memory were conducive to the correct interpretation of spatial demonstratives. The two cognitive abilities mutually influenced their respective roles in spatial demonstrative comprehension in the three different conditions. The findings suggest that the comprehension of spatial demonstratives comprehension is an area of need in Mandarin-speaking children on the autism spectrum, and it might be linked to their differences in cognitive abilities.

Several studies suggest that a valuable tool to examine linguistic skills in communication disorders is offered by procedures of narrative discourse assessment. Following this line of research, we present an exploratory study aimed to investigate storytelling abilities of autistic children to better define the characteristics of their story production. Participants included 41 autistic children and 41 children with typical development aged between 7.02 and 11.03 years matched on age, gender, level of formal education, intelligence quotient, working memory, attention skills, theory of mind, and phonological short-term memory. Narrative production was assessed by analysing the language samples obtained through the "Nest Story" description task. A multilevel analysis including micro- and macro-linguistic variables was adopted for narrative assessment. Group differences emerged on both micro- and macro-linguistic dimensions: autistic children produced narratives with more phonological errors and semantic paraphasias (microlinguistic variables) as well as more errors of global coherence and a fewer number of visible events and inferred events (macrolinguistic variables) than the control group. This study shows that even autistic children with adequate cognitive skills display several limitations in their narrative competence and that such weaknesses affect both micro- and macrolinguistic aspects of story production.

This study examined whether school-aged autistic children without co-occurring intellectual disabilities (autisticWoID) show similar difficulty on Theory of Mind (ToM) tasks as young autisticWoID children and if these difficulties are related to problems in domain-general aspects of cognition. Eighty-one autisticWoID and 44 neurotypical (NT) children between the ages of 8-16 years participated in this study and were matched on verbal IQ. ToM performance significantly and independently differentiated many, but not all, autisticWoID and NT participants above and beyond the effects of working memory and inferential thinking. However, these cognitive variables did not fully explain difficulties with social cognition in autisticWoID children. These findings have implications for understanding autism, the factors that may impact intervention for social cognition in autism, and the factors that impact the education of autistic children who may struggle in general education classrooms.

Previous research on children's knowledge about the mind has primarily focused on their comprehension of false beliefs, leaving the conceptualization of thoughts and thinking less explored. To address this gap, we developed a new assessment tool, the interview about the mind (IaM), to assess children's understanding of the mind. Two studies involving Polish preschool and early school-aged children were conducted to assess the validity and reliability of the tool: a cross-sectional study with 212 preschoolers aged three to 6 years (106 boys, M = 59 months) followed by a longitudinal study with approximately 200 children (110 boys) assessed at ages 5.5, 6.5, and 7.5 years. We found that the IaM possesses robust psychometric properties and a one-factor structure. Younger children recognize that thoughts are imperceptible to the senses and identified the mind's location as the head. Older children exhibited difficulties with analogical or abstract definitions of thoughts. As expected, a linear developmental trajectory was evident from ages 5.5-7.5, with children's language abilities showing a positive correlation with IaM scores. Future research should explore the relationship between knowledge about the mind and theory of mind (ToM), as well as cross-cultural differences in children's mind conceptualization.

The demands of learning in the twenty-first century require being skilled in the use and comprehension of multiple documents. Some individual factors such as the metacognitive skill of theory of mind (ToM) are related to this ability. This study investigated the relationship between university students' ability to comprehend multiple documents, measured through an argumentative essay task, and their ToM. The participants were 84 undergraduates. We assessed their ToM (using the strange stories task) and their mental state talk (using a think-aloud protocol during the reading of multiple documents--MST[subscript R]--and through the content of their subsequent written essays--MST[subscript W]). The relation between students' ToM and their MST[subscript W] was mediated through MST[subscript R]. In addition, students' ToM was significantly associated with the quality of the essays, through MST[subscript R], and the relation between MST[subscript R] and the argumentative quality was mediated through MST[subscript W]. MST[subscript W] was the only significant predictor of the quality of the essays. The involvement of ToM in multiple-document comprehension suggests, from an educational perspective, the possibility to support multiple-document comprehension by scaffolding mental state talk.

Cultural comparisons suggest that an understanding of other minds may develop sooner in independent versus interdependent settings, and vice versa for inhibitory control. From a western lens, this pattern might be considered paradoxical, since there is a robust positive relationship between theory of mind (ToM) and inhibitory control in western samples. In independent cultures, an emphasis on one's own mind offers a clear route to 'simulate' other minds, and inhibitory control may be required to set aside one's own perspective to represent the perspective of others. However, in interdependent cultures, social norms are considered the key catalyst for behaviour, and metacognitive reflection and/or suppression of one's own perspective may not be necessary. The cross-cultural generalizability of the western developmental route to ToM is therefore questionable. The current study used an age-matched cross-sectional sample to contrast 56 Japanese and 56 Scottish 3-6-year-old's metacognition, ToM and inhibitory control skills. We replicated the expected cultural patterns for ToM (Scotland > Japan) and inhibitory control (Japan > Scotland). Supporting western developmental enrichment theories, we find that inhibitory control and metacognition predict theory of mind competence in Scotland. However, these variables cannot be used to predict Japanese ToM. This confirms that individualistic mechanisms do not capture the developmental mechanism underlying ToM in Japan, highlighting a bias in our understanding of ToM development.

The alexithymia hypothesis posits that specific aspects of the autistic socio-cognitive profile, namely emotion recognition difficulties, can be explained by the increased prevalence of alexithymia in autistic populations. However, this hypothesis has largely been tested in adults. We tested whether co-occurring alexithymia could account for associations between autistic traits and two key domains of socio-emotional cognitive functioning in adolescence. Participants were 184 (44% male) children aged 10-16 years with and without a diagnosis of autism (n = 75 autistic), who completed experimental measures of emotion recognition and theory of mind. Parents completed assessment of autistic traits and alexithymia. Pre-registered analyses tested associations between autistic traits and socio-cognitive task performance, and whether including alexithymia as an additional predictor changed the nature of the association between autistic traits and task performance. Results showed participants with higher levels of autistic traits performed lower on emotion recognition and theory of mind tasks, and that these associations were not significantly altered by including alexithymia in the models. Results suggest that more work is needed to understand the applicability of the alexithymia hypothesis in younger populations, but that at least in young adolescents and when using parent-report measures, alexithymia may not be associated with emotion recognition or theory of mind ability.

Purpose: This study investigated irony comprehension by Mandarin-speaking children with cochlear implants, focusing on how prosodic and visual cues contribute to their comprehension, and whether second-order Theory of Mind is required for using these cues. Method: We tested 52 Mandarin-speaking children with cochlear implants (aged 3-7 years) and 52 age- and gender-matched children with normal hearing. All children completed a Theory of Mind test and a story comprehension test. Ironic stories were presented in three conditions, each providing different cues: (a) context-only, (b) context and prosody, and (c) context, prosody, and visual cues. Comparisons were conducted on the accuracy of story understanding across the three conditions to examine the role of prosodic and visual cues. Results: The results showed that, compared to the context-only condition, the additional prosodic and visual cues both improved the accuracy of irony comprehension for children with cochlear implants, similar to their normal-hearing peers. Furthermore, such improvements were observed for all children, regardless of whether they passed the second-order Theory of Mind test or not. Conclusions: This study is the first to demonstrate the benefits of prosodic and visual cues in irony comprehension, without reliance on second-order Theory of Mind, for Mandarin-speaking children with cochlear implants. It implies potential insights for utilizing prosodic and visual cues in intervention strategies to promote irony comprehension.

A large sample of autistic and non-autistic adults was recruited to investigate whether self-reported beliefs about their own and other people's mindreading abilities were in line with either mindreading deficit accounts of autism or the double empathy problem (DEP) (which proposes mindreading difficulties are relational in autism). Three hundred and forty-eight (139 autistic) participants completed an online questionnaire which asked about autism identification and diagnostic status and their beliefs about their own mindreading abilities in relation to autistic and non-autistic others, and about autistic and non-autistic others' abilities to read their (the participant's) own minds. While autistic participants did report weaker mindreading abilities, this was only true in relation to non-autistic others. Both groups reported better mindreading abilities in same- than other-neurotype interactions, with autistic participants reporting mindreading abilities commensurate with non-autistic participants in relation to autistic targets. The same pattern was found when participants were asked about other people's mindreading abilities. The findings were more consistent with the DEP than deficit theories, as the target reference group strongly impacted participants' perceived mindreading abilities. While self-reported beliefs do not necessarily reflect actual mindreading abilities, they may still have important consequences for intergroup relations and social outcomes for autistic people.

While there is considerable evidence that children's early ability to understand others' mental states, called "theory of mind," is shaped by family experiences, it remains unclear whether children's social interactions at school influence theory of mind (ToM) beyond early childhood. We tested whether the mean level ("quantity") and/or the diversity ("variety") of peers' ToM influenced children's own ToM. We also examined whether peer effects on ToM were independent of possible confounding variables (e.g., verbal ability, social isolation) and comparable across children with different initial levels of ToM and social status. Four hundred fifty-four 8-12-year-old children completed assessments of ToM and peer and friendship nominations at baseline and (for ToM only) 1 year later. The variety (but not the quantity) of peers' ToM predicted the development of children's ToM over and above control variables. The magnitude of the peer effect was comparable across different levels of children's ToM and between children indexed as socially isolated and those who were not. These findings fit with sociocultural models and highlight the importance of the school environment in the development of ToM.

Purpose: This study examined the impact of bilingualism on affective theory of mind (ToM) and social prioritization (SP) among autistic adults compared to neurotypical comparison participants. Method: Fifty-two (25 autistic, 27 neurotypical) adult participants (ages 21-35 years) with varying second language (L2) experience, ranging from monolingual to bilingual, completed an affective ToM task. A subset of this sample also completed a dynamic eye-tracking task designed to capture differences in time spent looking at social aspects of a scene (SP). Four language groups were compared on task performance (monolingual autism and neurotypical, bilingual autism and neurotypical), followed by analyses examining the contribution of L2 experience, autism characteristics, and social face prioritization on affective ToM, controlling for verbal IQ. Finally, we conducted an analysis to identify the contribution of SP on affective ToM when moderated by autism status and L2 experience, controlling for verbal IQ. Results: The monolingual autism group performed significantly worse than the other three groups (bilingual autism, monolingual neurotypical, and bilingual neurotypical) on the affective ToM task; however, there were no significant differences between the bilingual autism group compared to the monolingual and bilingual neurotypical groups. For autistic individuals, affective ToM capabilities were positively associated with both verbal IQ and L2 experience but did not relate to autism characteristics or SP during eye tracking. Neurotypical participants showed greater SP during the eye-tracking task, and SP did not relate to L2 or autism characteristics for autistic individuals. SP and verbal IQ predicted affective ToM performance across autism and neurotypical groups, but this relationship was moderated by L2 experience; SP more strongly predicted affective ToM performance among participants with lower L2 experience (e.g., monolingual) and had less of an impact for those with higher L2 experience. Conclusion: This study provides support for a bilingual advantage in affective ToM for autistic individuals.

Developmental science has experienced a vivid debate on whether young children prioritize goals over means in their prediction of others' actions. Influential developmental theories highlight the role of goal objects for action understanding. Yet, recent infant studies report evidence for the opposite. The empirical evidence is therefore inconclusive. The current study advanced this debate by assessing preschool children's verbal predictions of others' actions. In five experiments (N = 302), we investigated whether preschool children and adults predict agents to move towards their previous goal (that is, show goal-related predictions) or predict agents to move along the same movement path that they pursued before. While Experiments 1a, 1b and 1c presented young children and adults with animated agents, Experiments 2a and 2b presented participants with human grasping action. An integrative analysis across experiments revealed that children were more likely to predict the agent to move along the same movement path, Z = -4.574, p [less than or equal to] 0.0001 (r = 0.304). That is, preschool children were more likely to predict that agents would move along the same trajectory even though this action would lead to a new goal object. Thus, our findings suggest that young children's action prediction relies on the detection of spatial and movement information. Overall, we discuss our findings in terms of theoretical frameworks that conceive of action understanding as an umbrella term that comprises different forms and facets in which humans understand others' actions.

Does knowledge of other people's minds grow from concrete experience to abstract concepts? Cognitive scientists have hypothesized that infants' first-person experience, acting on their own goals, leads them to understand others' actions and goals. Indeed, classic developmental research suggests that before infants reach for objects, they do not see others' reaches as goal-directed. In five experiments (N = 117), we test an alternative hypothesis: Young infants view reaching as undertaken for a purpose but are open-minded about the specific goals that reaching actions are aimed to achieve. We first show that 3-month-old infants, who cannot reach for objects, lack the expectation that observed acts of reaching will be directed to objects rather than to places. Infants at the same age learned rapidly, however, that a specific agent's reaching action was directed either to an object or to a place, after seeing the agent reach for the same object regardless of where it was, or to the same place regardless of what was there. In a further experiment, 3-month-old infants did not demonstrate such inferences when they observed an actor engaging in passive movements. Thus, before infants have learned to reach and manipulate objects themselves, they infer that reaching actions are goal-directed, and they are open to learning that the goal of an action is either an object or a place.

The positive links between children's theory of mind (ToM), emotion understanding, and positive peer relationships are well established. However, the existing literature lacks comprehensive studies investigating the longitudinal interplay between these components in preschool-aged children. This study aimed to fill this gap by examining the concurrent and longitudinal associations between young children's social cognition and their positive peer relationships at three different time points over the course of 7 months. A sample of 211 preschool children (age in months: M[subscript T1] = 43.2, SD[subscript T1] = 6.6) underwent standardized assessments evaluating their ToM and emotion understanding, while playgroup educators reported on children's positive peer relationships. Using multivariate latent growth modeling, we expected to find that higher levels of ToM and emotion understanding would be associated with a greater rate of change in positive peer relationships and that higher levels of positive peer relationships would be associated with a higher rate of change in ToM and emotion understanding. Contrary to our expectations, the results did not support the anticipated longitudinal associations. Nevertheless, a noteworthy correlation emerged between children's emotion understanding and positive peer relationships at T1, in line with previous research and social-constructivist theories.

Autistic children and adolescents often have greater difficulty engaging in deception than their non-autistic peers. However, deception in autistic adulthood has received little attention to date. This study examined whether autistic and non-autistic adults differed in their inclination to lie in everyday situations and the factors that underpin this. Forty-one autistic and 41 non-autistic participants completed self-report measures relating to their inclination to lie, ability to lie and moral attitudes about the acceptability of lying. Participants also undertook a reaction-time test of lie-telling, as well as theory of mind and working memory measures. Autistic and non-autistic adults did not significantly differ in their inclination to lie in everyday situations. The degree to which lying was viewed as morally acceptable positively predicted both groups' inclination to lie. The remaining factors underpinning the inclination to lie differed between groups. Lower self-rated lying ability and slower lie speed predicted a reduced inclination to lie in autistic participants, whereas higher theory of mind and working memory capacity predicted a reduced inclination to lie in the non-autistic group. Implications for our understanding of deception in autistic and non-autistic adults are discussed.

Developing second/foreign language (L2) comprehension skills can represent a challenging endeavor for learners with autism spectrum condition (ASC) because their social and verbal cognition may be impaired in terms of abstract reasoning, organizing, and retelling events, inferring intentions, and identifying emotions contained in a text. Thus, it becomes relevant to explore how these learners experience metacognitive strategies when reading in a foreign language. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to explore how Chilean elementary learners with ASC perceive their metacognitive awareness and how they strategize their L2 reading. To this end, 27 elementary learners with ASC were asked to report on their perceptions of metacognition in L2 reading by means of a metacognitive awareness reading strategy inventory and semi-structured interviews. Findings revealed that participants displayed a medium level of awareness toward metacognition, with problem-solving strategies being the most frequently reported. The difficulties faced by these learners were related to an excessive focus on details rather than general ideas, concentration issues, avoidance of multitasking processes in reading, and not seeking help to ensure comprehension. Implications are discussed in terms of cognitive approaches to reading comprehension and the pedagogical need for nurturing a strategic approach to metacognition in L2 reading to increase autonomy and automaticity.

Montessori pedagogy is a century-old, whole-school system increasingly used in the public sector. In the United States, public Montessori schools are typically Title I schools that mostly serve children of color. The present secondary, exploratory data analysis examined outcomes of 134 children who entered a lottery for admission to public Montessori schools in the northeastern United States at age 3; half were admitted and enrolled and the rest enrolled at other preschool programs. About half of the children were identified as White, and half were identified as African American, Hispanic, or multiracial. Children were tested in the fall when they enrolled and again in the subsequent three springs (i.e., through the kindergarten year) on a range of measures addressing academic outcomes, executive function, and social cognition. Although the Black, Hispanic, and multiracial group tended to score lower in the beginning of preschool in both conditions, by the end of preschool, the scores of Black, Hispanic, and multiracial students enrolled in Montessori schools were not different from the White children; by contrast, such students in the business-as-usual schools continued to perform less well than White children in academic achievement and social cognition. The study has important limitations that lead us to view these findings as exploratory, but taken together with other findings, the results suggest that Montessori education may create an environment that is more conducive to racial and ethnic parity than other school environments.

This study advances our understanding of the role social studies methods courses can play in supporting pre-service teachers' development of their awareness of civic identities. Specifically, this study examines the use of interactive civic activities in developing preservice teachers' awareness of how their civic identities shape their social studies instruction. We analyzed data from preservice students' written memos, class activities, and conversations. Findings show that different instructional activities elicited differences in pre-service teachers' reported civic identities. Additionally, we found that identities were fluid relative to the issues presented, with students identifying with multiple identity types depending on their knowledge of and orientation to the social issues. Findings indicate that further research is needed to investigate a possible relationship between perceptions of civic identities and socio-political climates, exploring the intersection between place-based theories of learning and civic identity development in preservice teachers.

The present study applied Video Enhanced Reflective Practice (VERP) to promote and assess Finnish professionals' interactional competence by means of stimulated recall during three group-based shared review discussions. A VERP trainer guided the professionals to reflect on children's, their own, and colleagues' actions and mental states based on video-recorded interactions in early childhood education classrooms. Self-reports on attuned interaction and guidance were collected before and after the in-service training. A coding scheme was developed to assess the target, type, and richness of mental state utterances (N = 787) produced during the VERP training. The professionals equally discussed children's and adults' mental states. They talked more frequently about motivational states when referring to children and cognitive states when referring to themselves and colleagues. The more attuned the professionals perceived their interaction with the children was before training, the more frequently they referred to their own or colleagues' mental states observed during the group discussions. Our study extends assessment of mental states and provides guidelines for future group-based video-stimulated recall training for early childhood education professionals.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is strongly associated with socio-cognitive impairments that may result in vulnerability to other mental health conditions, particularly anxiety disorders. This study examined the relationship between anxiety disorders and two key socio-cognitive impairments (cognitive empathy, affective empathy) in 60 adolescents (aged 11-18 years) with and without ASD. Adolescents with ASD showed cognitive empathy was negatively associated with separation anxiety disorder, whereas positive associations between affective empathy and generalized anxiety disorder, and positive marginal associations between affective empathy, social phobia, total anxiety, and separation anxiety disorder were observed. These findings suggest that cognitive and affective empathy show different patterns of associations with anxiety-related issues in ASD, and these differences should be considered for interventions and treatment programs.

Previous research has shown that linguistic cues such as mental and modal verbs can influence young children's judgments about the reliability of informants. Further, certain languages include grammatical morphemes (i.e. evidential markers), which clarify the source of information coming from testimony (e.g., Bulgarian, Japanese, Turkish). Accordingly, the first aim of the current study is to examine whether Turkish-speaking children's reliability judgments change based on evidential markers (i.e. the past-tense "direct" evidential marker, -"DI", and the past-tense "indirect" evidential marker, -"mIs"). The literature has also investigated whether selective trust abilities are related to understanding the epistemic states of others (i.e., Theory of Mind). Therefore, the second aim is to examine the relation between selective trust based on evidential markers and ToM abilities by including a comprehensive ToM battery. Eighty-six Turkish-speaking preschool and elementary school children between the ages of 4 and 7, residing in a metropolitan city in Turkey, participated in a selective trust task based on evidential markers, a general language task, and a ToM battery. The results of the current study showed that after the age of 6, Turkish-speaking children start to selectively trust the informant using the past-tense direct evidential marker, -"DI", over the past-tense indirect evidential marker, -"mIs". Selective trust performance was related to receptive vocabulary but not to ToM abilities after controlling for participant gender and age. Overall, the results contribute to current discussions about children's selective trust ability based on linguistic cues and its relation with ToM.

This paper, conceptual but with empirical support, fills in some blanks in Vygotsky's reworking of Spinoza's "Ethics." Here Vygotsky sought to develop a developmental theory of emotions that would fit his developmental theory of higher psychological functions; that is, one which used function to explain how structure changes (much as Darwin had already done) and used social and cultural history to explain how functions change (much as Halliday would later do). We propose three ways -- roughly, the structural, the functional, and the developmental -- to continue Vygotsky's unfinished 'The Teaching about Emotions', which we illustrate with instances from classroom data. Using the systemic-functional approach of Halliday, we show how language development provides an answer to the Cartesian dualism that has divided thinking from feeling, how objective logical and experiential meanings emerge from emotionally colored and interpersonal ones, and how the study of speech can bypass the 'theory of mind' problems that have long bedevilled child development studies. Each step draws support from a teaching log of first year elementary students in South Korea maintained by one of the authors, and each step suggests a different kind of classroom talk.

In many cultural contexts, judging another as conscious or not has profound practical, legal, and philosophical consequences. However, little research focuses on how our ability to make such judgements arises. Thirty years ago a classic set of studies by Flavell et al. demonstrated that children do not develop a complex understanding of conscious ideation in others until age 8. We investigated whether children understand a more basic aspect of conscious experience at earlier ages: a person has conscious thoughts when awake in contrast to when soundly, dreamlessly asleep. We tested 211 3-to-13-year-old children, who watched video sequences, focally one where a person was asleep and then awoke. Children were half as likely to say the target was having thoughts while asleep compared to awake. Even the youngest children made this distinction, demonstrating that children as young as 3-years have at least a basic understanding of consciousness in others.

We investigated the relationship between Theory of Mind (ToM) and communicative cooperation. Specifically, we examined whether communicative cooperation is affected by the ToM ability of one's cooperative partner as well as their own. ToM is the attribution of mental states to oneself and others; cooperation is the joint action that leads to achieving a shared goal. We measured cooperation using a novel communicative cooperation game completed by participants in pairs. ToM was measured via the Movies for Assessment of Social Cognition (MASC) task and fluid intelligence via the Raven task. Findings of 350 adults show that ToM scores of both players were predictors of cooperative failure, whereas Raven scores were not. Furthermore, participants were split into low- and high-ToM groups through a median split of the MASC scores: high-ToM individuals committed significantly fewer cooperative errors compared to their low-ToM counterparts. Therefore, we found a direct relationship between ToM and cooperation. Interestingly, we also examined how ToM scores of paired participants determine cooperation. We found that pairs with two high-ToM individuals committed significantly fewer errors compared to pairs with two low-ToM individuals. We speculate that reduced cooperation in low--low ToM pairs is a result of less efficient development of conceptual alignment and recovery from misalignment, compared to high--high ToM dyads. For the first time, we thus demonstrate that it is not all about you; both cooperative partners make key, independent, contributions to cooperative outcomes.

Multidimensional theory of mind assessments should include items assessing both explicit theory of mind (theory of mind knowledge) and applied theory of mind (application of theory of mind knowledge in real-life contexts). However, the two theory of mind scores cannot be interpreted collectively to identify children having mismatched explicit and applied theory of mind due to the lack of links between the two scores. To map the information between two theory of mind scores, data of 221 autistic children aged 3-12 years were extracted. Items of the Theory of Mind Task Battery and Theory of Mind Inventory-2 were used to respectively assess the explicit and applied theory of mind. Rasch analysis and correlation coefficients were used to examine the model fits/dimensionality and relationships. After the removal of misfit items, the remaining 45 items showed satisfactory model fits (infit and outfit mean squares < 1.35). Large correlation (r = 0.63) was found between the Rasch scores of the two theory of mind constructs. The scatter plots highlighted that each applied theory of mind score could reflect multiple explicit ToM scores. Accordingly, the information from each theory of mind measure is unique and irreplaceable. Moreover, cutoff scores for identifying children with mismatched explicit and applied theory of mind were proposed to determine the priority of interventions.

Research Findings: Research with older children and adults reliably demonstrates that individuals raised in poverty tend to evaluate concerns related to moral concerns (i.e., related to harm, welfare, and justice) differently than do wealthier individuals. However, little work has examined these patterns in young children. Children (N=214, Mage = 53.30 months, SD = 18.3 months) completed tasks regarding accidental and prototypic moral transgressions, and a standard verbal assessment. Parents reported family size and household income, which were used to compute individuals' income-to-needs ratio (INR) compared to federal standards. Using generalized linear mixed modeling (GLMM), a repeated-measure analysis, results indicate that children in low-income families (INR < 2.0) were more lenient in how they evaluate both accidental and prototypic issues, compared to more affluent children. Moreover, they were more likely to evaluate issues based on communal welfare (e.g., equitable resource distribution), whereas more affluent children were more likely to reference psychological harm. Practice or Policy: Practitioners and researchers of early childhood should be cognizant and sensitive to differences in children's social understanding. We encourage scholars to use a strength-based, adaptive approach in future research on children's cognition, particularly involving SES, class, and the like.

Oral retelling portrays what one understands from reading or listening to a text. The retold stories of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often show macrostructural (overall story structure) difficulties. The study's purpose was to compare macrostructure oral story retelling, after reading (visual modality) or listening (auditory modality) to a story, among 20 children with ASD versus 20 children with typical development and to examine correlations with theory of mind (ToM). The study measures included story retelling and second-order ToM. The ASD group exhibited difficulties in one essential macrostructure aspect. No differences emerged between modalities for both groups. ToM correlated positively with macrostructure measures in both groups. False belief significantly correlated with the ability to retell essential characteristics in the visual modality for ASD. Implications are discussed.

This study examines relationships between mathematical problem-solving performance (in terms of strategies used and accuracy) and the main cognitive domains associated with mathematical learning (i.e. executive functions, verbal comprehension and social perception) of children with and without autism spectrum disorder (ASD and non-ASD resp.). The study involved 26 ASD and 26 non-ASD children without intellectual disabilities, between 6 and 12 years old, matched by sex, age and school (grade and classroom). The results show a higher percentage of ASD children with problem solving difficulties than non-ASD (57% vs. 23% resp.). Poor performing ASD children showed comparatively lower scores in inhibition, theory of mind and verbal comprehension. Implications for the design of mathematical interventions for ASD students are discussed.

Superstitious behaviors persist across time, culture, and age. Although often considered irrational and even potentially harmful, superstitions have recently been shown to have positive effects on stress levels, confidence, and ultimately, performance. However, it remains unclear how people conceive of superstitious behaviors, specifically, whether people attribute apparent superstitious efficacy to magical forces or to something else, such as reduced stress or increased confidence. In two studies we asked 6- to 9-year-old children and adults from the United States to rate how causally connected superstitious behaviors were to desired outcomes. In Study 1, participants provided open-ended responses to questions probing why they believed the actions were tied to the outcomes. Participants were more likely across ages to offer natural than magical explanations to explain the connection -- this became more pronounced with age. In Study 2, half the stories did not permit a plausible natural explanation, thus any perceived causal relation could only be attributable to magic. Participants were asked how connected the superstitious behaviors were to the outcomes. We found significant differences in ratings of connectedness between stories that held plausible natural explanations and those that did not in our adult sample only. Our findings suggest that people recruit their naïve psychology when reasoning about the efficacy of superstitious behaviors; however, children may also believe magic to be causally relevant.

Although digital technology is an important part of young people's lives, previous research implies that they have a limited understanding of what programming is and its connection to the digital devices they encounter every day. In order to create conditions for meaningful teaching in and about programming in technology education, more knowledge about younger students' pre-understanding and experiences is needed. In the light of this, the aim of this case study was to explore young pupils' descriptions of the concept 'programming', in connection with being introduced to programming as a teaching content in technology education. The study is based on semi-structured interviews with 16 children in year 1 (7-year-olds) in a primary school in Sweden. In their descriptions of 'programming' as an activity, the pupils mainly used technological descriptions--a theory of artificial mind perspective. However, when they talked about the objects with which they associated programming, psychological descriptions--a theory of mind perspective--were more clearly present. Then, a less pronounced distinction between humans and machines was made. Anthropomorphic references were used, such as when the pupils referenced children's culture such as movies and television programs. However, the term 'programming' was difficult for many of the pupils to grasp. They also had difficulty in finding a function for programming, as well as explanations and arguments for why they learn programming in school. The results of this study indicate that these 7-year-old pupils perceive 'programming' as something complex. This at the same time as they describe how programmed and programmed artefacts (including AI devices) are highly present in their everyday lives, in their leisure environments, and in school. This mirrors how technology has become an 'intelligent' and active agent, rather than a mere tool in their lives--an aspect that teachers may forget to take advantage of.

This study aimed to examine the unique longitudinal role of theory of mind (ToM) on reading comprehension among primary school children, while controlling for other influencing factors. It also examined how this impact varies by grade, text genre, and processing level. A sample of 430 Chinese children in Grades 2, 4, and 6 was observed over a period of 6 months. For each grade, longitudinal hierarchical regression analyses were conducted to examine the unique contribution of ToM to reading comprehension across different text genres and processing levels. By controlling for variables such as reading frequency, decoding, vocabulary, nonverbal intelligence, listening comprehension, and executive function, ToM cannot predict the overall reading comprehension of children in Grade 2, but can predict it of children in Grades 4 and 6. For specific text genres, ToM predicted narrative comprehension in both Grades 4 and 6 and expository comprehension only in Grade 6. For specific processing levels, ToM predicted advanced comprehension in Grades 4 and 6 and basic comprehension only in Grade 6. Furthermore, ToM predicted advanced narrative and expository comprehension in Grades 4 and 6, and basic expository comprehension in Grade 6. These findings highlight the important role of ToM in reading comprehension development, particularly in the middle and upper stages of primary school. These results lay the foundation for further research on exploring the underlying mechanisms of the impact of ToM on reading comprehension and provide a social-cognitive perspective to enhance the development of reading comprehension.

Theory of Mind (ToM) is a skill of social cognition recently of interest to literacy researchers. This article presents initial findings from a pilot study investigating the use of ToM to teach theme identification and theme statement formation to beginning readers who are less-skilled in comprehension. The authors designed a brief, 1:1 listening comprehension intervention using a ToM focused inference making questioning structure to conduct a dialogic read aloud. Using a multi-probe single-case research design, the authors engaged three less-skilled comprehenders in Grades 2 and 3 in the intervention virtually using online texts of authentic children's literature. The findings from the pilot study indicate that situating ToM as a skill of social inference making during dialogic reading activities, combined with explicit instruction on theme identification, is an effective method by which to increase the listening comprehension of less-skilled comprehenders. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Background: Previous literature suggests that children with Down syndrome (DS) have difficulties in cognitive and affective components of Theory of Mind (ToM). However, the nature of the distinction between cognitive and affective ToM has not yet been addressed in depth in this population. Aims: This work is aimed at studying the cognitive and affective ToM in children with DS. Methods and Procedures: Cognitive ToM tasks (first-order false belief) and affective ToM tasks (Test of Emotion Comprehension) were administered to 30 children with DS (aged from 4 to 12 years) and to 60 typically developing (TD) children (aged from 2 to 12 years). TD children were divided into 2 groups: a Language control group and a Chronological age control group. Results: Results suggest that children with DS have difficulty with both the cognitive and affective ToM components, even when compared to the language control group. In contrast to children with typical development, children with DS have a better performance in affective ToM. Conclusions: We discuss our results in the light of prior studies describing the difficulties of children with DS in ToM tasks and the role of language in ToM development.

Background: This study examines the effect of a Theory of Mind (ToM) intervention on ToM abilities and social-emotional functioning in adolescents with developmental language disorder (DLD) or who are deaf/hard of hearing (D/HH). It emphasizes the importance of self-reflection and measurement for personal growth. The research design incorporates both subjective and objective measures to evaluate the intervention's efficacy. Aims: To investigate the impact of the ToM intervention on ToM abilities and social-emotional functioning in adolescents with DLD or who are D/HH. It hypothesizes that participants in the intervention groups will show improved ToM and social-emotional functioning compared with those in the control groups. Methods & Procedures: Adolescents with DLD or who are D/HH were recruited through collaboration with educational institutions. The study utilized a pre-/post-test design, assigning participants to either the intervention or the control group. The ToM intervention involved targeted activities to enhance ToM abilities. ToM abilities and social-emotional functioning were assessed using standardized tests and self-report questionnaires. Statistical analyses compared outcomes between the intervention and no intervention groups. Outcomes & Results: The findings reveal subjective improvements in social-emotional functioning among the D/HH intervention group. However, no significant effects on objective ToM measures were observed. These results highlight the need for further investigation and refinement of interventions in these areas. Future research should focus on improving intervention strategies and exploring additional objective measures to gain a comprehensive understanding of the intervention's impact on ToM and social-emotional functioning in this population. Conclusions & Implications: The ToM intervention shows subjective benefits in improving social-emotional functioning among D/HH adolescents. However, it does not yield significant effects on objective ToM measures. These findings emphasize the ongoing need to refine interventions targeting ToM abilities and social-emotional functioning in this population. Future studies should explore alternative strategies and incorporate additional objective measures to enhance understanding and outcomes.

Recent discussions in language communication indicate the effectiveness of technology and computer-mediated communication. Research also highlights the central role of synchronous and asynchronous modes of interaction in second and foreign language development. Gaining insights from Vygotskyan sociocultural theory of mind, the present study employed a mixed methods approach to explore the effect of synchronous computer-mediated corrective feedback on EFL learners' grammatical knowledge development. The participants were 40 Iranian EFL learners selected through a grammar-based pretest. Employing Skype software, the experimental group (N=20) was exposed to online text-based chatting. The purpose was to provide the participants with online technology-based corrective feedback on their grammatical errors. However, the control group (N=20) did not receive technology-enhanced corrective feedback during the experiment. The results highlighted: (a) the technology-enhanced, experimental group outperformed their counterpart with regard to grammatical accuracy, (b) the online Skype-based text chatting context played a mediating role in reinforcing the experimental group's grammatical knowledge, and (c) the participants displayed a high level of motivation to initiate and engage in L2 communication. The participants' experience of the Skype-based classroom emphasized themes of overcoming emotional problems in communication and fostering interpersonal relationship and rapport with the teacher and peers. Pedagogical implications focus on the potential of synchronous computer-mediated communication-based contexts as useful spaces for active collaborative learning and task engagement.

According to current accounts of social cognition, the emergence of verbal and non-verbal components of social perception might rely on the acquisition of different cognitive abilities. These components might be differently sensitive to the pattern of neuropsychological impairments in congenital neurodevelopmental disorders. Here, we explored the association between social and non-social cognitive domains by administering subtests of the NEPSY-II battery to 92 patients with Intellectual and Developmental Disability (IDD). Regardless the level of intellectual functioning and presence of congenital brain malformations, results revealed that visuospatial skills predicted emotion recognition and verbal component of Theory of Mind, whereas imitation predicted the non-verbal one. Future interventions might focus on spatial and sensorimotor abilities to boost the development of social cognition in IDD.

This two-year follow-up study examined the predictive relationships of theory of mind (ToM) to social interaction by reciprocal social behaviors (RSBs) and social functioning (SF) in 106 children with ASD. The results of the path analysis showed that the earlier ToM predicted children's current component RSBs (B = 3.53, SE = 1.86, p = 0.039) and the current SF (B = 1.79-1.87, SE = 0.03-0.34, p < 0.001). The aloof and passive social interaction styles predicted fewer turn-taking of RSBs (B = - 48.77 to - 111.17, p < 0.001) and fewer components of RSBs (B = - 36.30 to - 81.41, p < 0.001). This finding provides empirical evidence that ToM predicts social interaction in children with ASD.

Discussions surrounding early years' theorist Piaget's philosophy of learning schema styles and their potential impact upon children with a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder will be highlighted within this position paper. Furthermore, this paper will also focus on the need for a Schematic Driven Pedagogy implementation to connect both additional learning needs and early years pedagogies by exploring relevant literature within this field. The conclusions drawn from the most current literature suggests that a specific schema curriculum implementation designed for individual schemas could potentially provide many benefits for autistic children. Potential benefits explored within this paper include improvement within some social skills through the exploration of play-based situations adapted to individual schemas.

This paper makes a conceptual argument for using the Decoding the Disciplines research paradigm as a pedagogical innovation in the field of teacher education. It incorporates empirical findings from a research project in which teacher candidates conduct Decoding interviews to deepen understanding of historical thinking and learn pedagogical practices. Results indicate teacher candidates benefitted from conducting Decoding the Disciplines research and saw connections between that research and their future practice.

Theory of Mind (ToM), as a relevant aspect in children's socio-cognitive development, has been widely studied. Some results have suggested that bilingual children have an advantage over their monolingual peers in development of ToM. However, there is less research regarding the predictive role of ToM in performance of oral and reading comprehension in elementary school students. This study evaluated a sample of 84 emergent bilingual, Spanish-speaking, third to fifth graders to identify the predictive role of ToM in their oral comprehension and reading comprehension in English, their second language, controlling for grade, vocabulary, and word identification. ToM was assessed using a test of other people's intentions, beliefs, and perspectives, along with recognition of emotions through facial expressions. For comprehension, standardized measures of oral and reading comprehension were used. The bivariate correlations and hierarchical linear regression analyses between ToM and each of the types of comprehension indicated a prediction of ToM in both types of comprehension when controlling statistically for grade, word identification, and vocabulary. This highlights the role of ToM in oral language and reading variables in emergent bilingual students and emphasizes its importance for teaching of reading for this population.

The current study investigates narrative retelling and comprehension among 30 native Arabic-speaking preschool children with a mean age of 5:10. Narrative features of text-complexity (less-complex and more-complex episodic structure) and language variety (Spoken Palestinian Arabic [PA] and Modern Standard Arabic [MSA]) were analyzed for their effect on narrative retelling and comprehension. Four narratives accompanied by six pictures each (Gagarina et al., 2012) were used. Two were presented in MSA and two in PA, the children's spoken vernacular. Two of them, one per each language variety, matched on episodic structure, were less complex, and two were more complex. Although children were free to choose which language to use for the retelling, they all used PA. Retelling performance was analyzed according to macrostructure, microstructure, and the use of Internal State Terms (ISTs). Comprehension was tested via questions addressing the character's goals, ISTs, and Theory of Mind. With respect to text complexity, the results showed that the participants produced longer texts and demonstrated better comprehension when the narratives were more complex. Language variety was only associated with a difference in comprehension, with higher scores for the narratives presented in MSA. Older children produced longer texts and a higher number of ISTs. Finally, a three-way interaction emerged in the use of ISTs -- while younger children produced more ISTs for the PA narratives, the older ones produced more of those for the MSA narratives. The study suggests that language variety and text complexity may exert different effects on narrative production and comprehension in Arabic-speaking preschool children.

The relation between cognition and life satisfaction is shaped by several factors. The present research investigated whether mindreading skills are linked to subjective well-being and anxiety during the transition into adolescence. Specifically, our aim was to investigate individual differences in those constructs and gendered relational patterns. A sample of 142 Italian sixth- and seventh-graders (84 boys, M = 11.83 years, SD = 6.87 months) completed a theory-of-mind task, and questionnaires on perceptions of different anxiety subtypes and life satisfaction. In the total sample, no interrelations were found among the variables. Nonetheless, mediation analyses conducted separately by gender showed that, only among girls, higher theory-of-mind scores were associated with lower perception of life satisfaction through the mediation of higher generalized anxiety levels. Results suggest that the approach to adolescence may provide a timely intervention window to develop preventive programs that target internalizing symptoms and their cascade effects on young people's well-being.

Previous studies have suggested that parents may support the development of theory of mind (ToM) in their child by talking about mental states (mental state talk; MST). However, MST has not been sufficiently explored in deaf children with cochlear implants (CIs). This study investigated ToM and availability of parental MST in deaf children with CIs (n = 39, M[subscript age] = 62.92, SD = 15.23) in comparison with their peers with typical hearing (TH; n = 52, M[subscript age] = 52.48, SD = 1.07). MST was measured during shared storybook reading. Parents' narratives were coded for cognitive, emotional, literal, and non-mental references. ToM was measured with a parental questionnaire. Children with CIs had lower ToM scores than their peers with TH, and their parents used more literal references during shared storybook reading. There were no significant differences in the frequencies of cognitive and emotional references between groups. Parental emotional references contributed positively to children's ToM scores when controlling for the child's age and receptive grammar only in the CI group. These results indicated some distinctive features in parents of deaf children with CIs' MST and highlighted the role of MST in the development of ToM abilities in this group.

There are two broad views of children's theory of mind. The mentalist view is that it emerges in infancy and is possibly innate. The minimalist view is that it emerges more gradually in childhood and is heavily dependent on learning. According to minimalism, children initially understand behaviors rather than mental states, and they are assisted in doing so by recognizing repeating patterns in behavior. The regularities in behavior allow them to predict future behaviors, succeed on theory-of-mind tasks, acquire mental state words, and eventually, understand the mental states underlying behavior. The present study provided the first clear evidence for the plausibility of this view by fitting head cameras to 54 infants aged 6 to 25 months, and recording their view of the world in their daily lives. At 6 and 12 months, infants viewed an average of 146.5 repeated behaviors per hour, a rate consistent with approximately 560,000 repetitions in their first year, and with repetitions correlating with children's acquisition of mental state words, even after controlling for their general vocabulary and a range of variables indexing social interaction. We also recorded infants' view of people searching or searching for and retrieving objects. These were 92 times less common and did not correlate with mental state vocabulary. Overall, the findings indicate that repeated behaviors provide a rich source of information for children that would readily allow them to recognize patterns in behavior and help them acquire mental state words, providing the first clear evidence for this claim of minimalism.

Lying is a prevalent and normative behavior in young children. Conceptually, it is strongly linked with children's theory-of-mind development. However, empirical studies show that the link between children's lying and theory-of-mind is heterogeneous. This study examined whether parental control and parental warmth moderate the link between children's lying and theory-of-mind understanding. Three- to six-year-old Singaporean children (N = 116, M[subscript age] = 59 months, 59 male, 81.0% Chinese) participated in the temptation resistance paradigm, in which they were asked to guess the identity of a toy but instructed not to peek at it when left alone. Parental control and parental warmth were assessed via a parent-child interactive game. Results showed that the relation between children's maintenance of their initial lie and general theory-of-mind understanding was moderated by parental warmth. Specifically, there was a negative relation between children's lying and theory-of-mind for dyads with high parental warmth, but a positive relation between children's lying and theory-of-mind for dyads with low parental warmth. Overall, the findings suggest that children's lying behavior is the outcome of a complex interaction between cognitive and social factors.

In this article, I briefly review theories about the development of theory of mind, and then examine evidence for minimalism, the idea that infants initially understand only behaviors. To this end, I consider the need for a wide variety of species to predict the behaviors of other animals and that human infants are not unique in this regard. I also discuss evidence for infants' understanding of behaviors, including their good statistical learning skills and their rich exposure to patterns of behavior, which correlates with their acquisition of mental state vocabulary. Finally, I discuss evidence for how maternal mental state talk, as well as children's evolving language and understanding of self, contributes to learning that mental states underlie behaviors.