Journal
CHILD DEVELOPMENT
Volume 92, Issue 5, Pages 1872-1888Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1111/cdev.13627
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This 5-year longitudinal study investigated the development of advanced theory-of-mind (AToM) in German children aged 5 to 10. The study found that core aspects of AToM developed nonlinearly, reaching a milestone around age 7. Different mechanisms may underlie diverse aspects of social cognition in middle childhood.
This 5-year longitudinal study investigated advanced theory-of-mind (AToM) development in 161 German 5- to 10-year-olds (89 females, 72 males). Core aspects of AToM developed nonlinearly, with children reaching a milestone at the age of 7 years, around when they attained the conceptual insight that mental states can be recursive. In late elementary school, a multicomponent battery was used. Performance on many aspects of AToM was predicted by information-processing skills (intelligence and language at 6 years), but not by the age when children acquired the basic conceptual insight; only some naturalistic, social-interpretative tasks were correlated with children's age at acquisition. This study documents significant developmental progressions in middle-childhood AToM and suggests that different mechanisms may underlie diverse aspects of social cognition.
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