This longitudinal study investigates theory of mind (ToM) development in middle childhood and its demographic and linguistic predictors. In this study, 194 Italian primary school children (Mage = 9.4 years; 47% girls; 28% with one or both Italian parents) were assessed four times over 2 years using a multi-modal ToM battery. Results confirmed longitudinal measurement invariance of the ToM battery. Latent growth modeling showed ToM growth from Time 1 to Time 3, followed by a plateau. Analyses revealed significant inter-individual variability at Time 1 but no variance in the rate of development. Higher verbal ability and having siblings predicted higher initial ToM, while non-native speakers began lower but showed greater gains. Findings extend existing accounts on ToM development.

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. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

This study examined the link between classroom ethnic diversity, cross-ethnic friendships, and children's theory of mind. In total, 730 children in the United Kingdom (54.7% girls, 51.5% White) aged 8 to 13 years completed measures of theory of mind in 2019/2020. Controlling for verbal ability, executive function, peer social preference, and teacher-reported demographic characteristics, greater classroom ethnic diversity provided opportunities for cross-ethnic friendships, and children with cross-ethnic friendships performed better than peers without cross-ethnic friendships on theory of mind. These results extend accounts of intergroup contact by using direct assessments of children's theory of mind and advance social accounts of theory of mind by demonstrating how experiences outside the family are linked with theory of mind.

Supportive family relationships may mitigate the impact of the Covid19 pandemic on young children's adjustment, but existing work is limited by its focus on within-country variation and parental influences. Addressing these gaps, and drawing on reported buffering effects of older siblings on child mental health (Lawson and Mace, 2010), the current international study examined whether child adjustment problems were, on average, elevated by the pandemic and whether this buffering effect of older siblings would be maintained. In the first wave of the Covid19 pandemic (April to July 2020), 2516 parents of 3- to 8-year-old children living in Australia, China, Italy, Sweden, United Kingdom, and United States of America-six countries with contrasting governmental responses to the pandemic-completed an online survey about family experiences and relationships and child adjustment, as indexed by ratings on the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ: R. Goodman, 1997). As expected, child SDQ total difficulty scores were elevated in all sites except Sweden (which notably did not enforce mass school closures). Compared to children without siblings, children with one or more older siblings showed fewer adjustment problems. Children from lone-parent households displayed more adjustment problems, as did those whose parents reported increased sibling conflict. Finally, child adjustment problems were negatively associated with family socio-economic status, but positively related to the indices of Covid-19 family disruption and government stringency. We discuss these findings in relation to existing work on asymmetric effects of older versus younger siblings, and siblings as sources of support.

Abstract. At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, unprecedented social distancing rules (including mass school closures) dramatically constrained children’s social lives, jeopardizing human connections that foster prosocial development. This study of 2,516 families of 3–8-year-olds from six countries (China, Sweden, Australia, Italy, the USA, and the United Kingdom) examined whether children’s understanding or feelings about COVID-19 regulations mediated the expected association between COVID-19-related family disruption and children’s prosocial behavior, as indexed by parental ratings. For all six sites, family disruption indirectly predicted reduced prosocial behavior. Negative feelings about COVID-19 regulations mediated this association in all sites except China. Contrariwise, understanding of COVID-19 regulations was not implicated in the link between family disruption and reduced prosocial behavior.

Abstract Objectives The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) has been shown to be invariant across informants, developmental stage and settings, but tests of cross‐cultural equivalence are limited to adolescents' self‐reports. The COVID‐19 pandemic makes this gap particularly pertinent, given the need to understand whether distinct government approaches (e.g., school closures) are uniquely associated with variability in children's psychosocial outcomes and the reliance on parents' ratings for young children. Methods Within a Confirmatory Factor Analysis framework, we tested the cross‐cultural measurement invariance of the SDQ across six countries: Australia, China, Italy, Sweden, the United Kingdom and USA, using a sample of 1761 parents of 3‐ to 8‐year‐olds (M = 5.76, SD = 1.09). Results A five‐factors model showed good fit to the data and partial cross‐cultural scalar invariance. In this sample, Swedish parents reported the fewest peer problems (Cohen's d = 0.950) and the highest prosocial scores (Cohen's d = 0.547), whilst British parents reported the greatest child emotional (Cohen's d = 0.412) and hyperactivity problems (Cohen's d = 0.535). Conclusions The present results indicate that the parent‐version of the SDQ is appropriate for use and comparison across different contexts during the pandemic.

This study examined the link between theory of mind (ToM) in middle childhood and teachers' propensity for mental-state language and self-reported conversational-instruction strategies. Multilevel analyses on 430 Italian children (221 girls, M-age = 9.34 years, SD = .63, Range: 7.95-11.43 years) from 27 primary-school classrooms and their teachers showed that: (i) there were striking between-classroom differences in children's ToM; (ii) teachers' propensity for mental-state language (beta = .14) and self-reported conversational-instruction strategies (beta = .16) were uniquely associated with pupils' ToM even when child-related (i.e., age, verbal ability, number of siblings and SES) and teacher-related variables (i.e., ToM, verbal ability and years of experience) were controlled; and (iii) the association between self-reported conversational-instruction strategies and ToM was significant in older children and smaller classrooms. These findings extend socio-cultural accounts of ToM by showing a developmental continuity of environmental effects on children's ToM.

Past literature on prosocial behavior in aging has mainly focused on age-related differences. However, the analysis of the predictors of prosociality in late adulthood is still under investigated. The present study examines how personality traits predict actual and self-reported prosocial behaviors, while considering the mediation effects of empathic concern and the moderator effect of age, in an Italian sample of 150 participants aged from 55 to 86 years old (M-age = 69.52). Based on a path analysis model, results revealed that agreeableness has a direct association with self-reported prosocial behavior and an indirect relationship, via empathic concern, with actual prosocial behavior. In addition, emotional stability further explains variations in older adults' prosociality, via empathic concern. Age also plays a different role on actual and self-reported behaviors. While the relationship between empathic concern and actual behavior is the same in middle-aged and older adults, in the self-reported behaviors it changes according to the age of participants. As they grow older, people perform prosocial acts in daily life driven by basic dispositions, such as agreeableness, and not by empathic concern. These findings have important implications regarding the understanding of the motives that drive the different prosocial behaviors in the older population.

To estimate specific proximal and distal effects of COVID-19-related restrictions on families on children’s adjustment problems, we conducted a six-site international study. In total, 2516 parents from Australia, China, Italy, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America living with a young child (Mage = 5.77, SD = 1.10, range = 3 to 8 years, 47.9% female) completed an online survey between April and July 2020. The survey included the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire and family risk factors (parent distress, parent–child conflict, couple conflict, and household chaos) as well as a scale to index COVID-19-related family disruption. Our analyses also included public data on the stringency of national restrictions. Across the six sites, parental responses indicated elevated levels of hyperactivity, conduct, and emotion problems in children from families characterized by heightened levels of parent distress, parent–child conflict, and household chaos. In contrast, increased peer problems were more strongly related to COVID-19-related social disruption and stringency measures. Mediation models demonstrated that associations between COVID-19 social disruption and child difficulties could be explained by parental distress. Taken together, these results suggest that although the experience of the pandemic differed across countries, associations between COVID-19-related family experiences and child adjustment difficulties were similar in their nature and magnitude across six different contexts. Programs to support family resilience could help buffer the impact of the pandemic for two generations.

Metaphor understanding is a pragmatic inferential skill that serves a social function in adulthood. The present longitudinal study was designed to investigate the existence and the direction of the associations between metaphor understanding and peer relationships in children. One-hundred twenty-six typically developing 9-year-old children were tested at baseline and a year later for their ability to understand metaphors (via the physical and mental metaphors task) and their peer relationships (through peer acceptance and rejection). Results showed a longitudinal and bidirectional association between metaphor understanding and peer rejection, but not peer acceptance. Children who were more rejected were less able to understand metaphors 1 year later and children who struggled in understanding metaphors were more rejected 1 year later. Results are discussed in light of existing theoretical models. Overall, these findings show that the social nature of metaphor traces back to peer relationships in children. Highlights The study examined the developmental associations between metaphor understanding and social peer relationships. Adopting an autoregressive cross-lagged modelling approach we found a bidirectional developmental association between metaphor accuracy and peer rejection. High rejection predicts lower metaphor understanding 1 year later and low metaphor understanding predicts higher rejection 1 year later.

Studies on age differences in emotional states during the COVID-19 pandemic showed that older adults experienced greater emotional wellbeing compared to younger adults. We hypothesized these age differences to be related to the perception of closeness to family/friends or the engagement in daily activities during the pandemic. To investigate age differences in positive and negative emotional experiences and whether the perception of closeness to family/friends and the engagement in daily activities during pandemic explained such age-related differences. Through a cross-sectional study, 1,457 adults aged 18–87 years old completed an online survey assessing positive and negative emotional experiences, the perception of more closeness to family/friends, and daily activities that participants started/re-started during the pandemic. Increasing age was associated with more positive and less negative emotional experiences. Age differences in positive emotional experience were explained by the perception of more closeness to friends and not by the engagement in daily activities. For negative emotional experience age, differences remained significant even after accounting for the perception of closeness to family/friends and engagements in daily activities. Older adults’ greater overall level of positive emotional experience was explained by their greater perception of more closeness to friends. We speculate that social closeness provides a coping mechanism to increase emotional wellbeing employed especially in older adults. Our findings reinforce the link between perceived social closeness and emotional wellbeing especially in older adults. To cope with stressful situation, it is important to encourage older adults to increase the closeness to their social network.

Theoretical accounts and experimental data on young children have shown that executive functions (EFs) are predicted by experiential factors. However, studies on school-aged children are rare. The present study has addressed this gap using a short-term cross-lagged longitudinal design focusing on the relationship between working memory (WM), conflict inhibition (CI), and peer acceptance (PA) and rejection (PR) in middle childhood. 245 children, aged 8 to 12 years at Time 1 (M = 10.03 years, SD = 1.21 years), were tested three times over 1 year. SEM showed that (a) PA at Times 1 and 2 positively predicted WM at Times 2 and 3 and (b) PR at Time 1 negatively predicted CI at Time 2. Our findings are in line with the view that EFs are significantly affected by children's social life at school and are interpreted in light of the regulatory depletion model and of the socio-constructivist models. Highlights We examine cross-lagged associations between children's peer relationships and executive functions in the school context. Peer acceptance predicts working memory development and peer rejection predicts inhibition development in middle childhood. Executive functioning development is sensitive to children's social experiences with peers at school.

Recent research has shown that individual differences in Theory of mind (ToM) during middle childhood are linked with individual differences in children’s peer relationships. The present longitudinal study investigated this association more deeply, exploring the potential mediating role played by children’s social anxiety. We tested a group of 66 children (11.5 years old at Time 1) three times over one year after their transition to secondary school. Over and above language, SES and stability in individual differences, ToM performance shortly after starting secondary school (Time 1) predicted higher peer acceptance, as well as lower peer rejection, one year later (Time 3) via lower levels of social anxiety over time (Time 2). This study extends our knowledge about the links between social understanding and interpersonal relations in middle childhood. The results suggest that ToM may play an important role in children’s adjustment when confronting new social contexts.

We investigated the association between individual differences in metaphor understanding and Theory of Mind (ToM) in typically developing children. We distinguished between two types of metaphors and created a Physical and Mental Metaphors task, echoing a similar distinction for ToM. Nine-year-olds scored lower than older age-groups in ToM as well as in the interpretation of mental, but not physical, metaphors. Moreover, nine-year-olds (but not older children) who are better in ToM are also better in interpreting mental, but not physical, metaphors. This suggests that the link between metaphor and ToM is stronger when metaphorical interpretation involves mental aspects, and it is more evident in early rather than later childhood.