1. Themes and Perspectives in Developmental Psychology. 2. Methodological Approaches. 3. The Development of Thinking. 4. Does Piaget's theory stand up to examination? 5. What children understand about the mind. 6. Developmental disorders. 7. Autism. 8. Numerical development: What do young children understand about the world of numbers? 9. Developing an ability to see the world. 10. Developing an ability to draw. 11. The role of heredity and environment in intelligence. 12. Language development. 13. Developing an ability to communicate. 14. Parenting and the development of love and attachment. 15. Moral development. 16. Development of anti-social behaviour. 17. Freud's theory of personality development. 18. References. 19. Glossary

Background:Previous research has found that people can make a variety of judgments about others based on brief samples of their behavior such as judging their social favorability and whether they wish to socialize with them. Non-autistic people frequently perceive autistic people more negatively than non-autistic people, although we do not fully understand the real-world consequences of this perceptual bias. This study extends previous work by investigating these perceptual biases within a real-world context: university. Method:Non-autistic university students (n = 25) watched short, candid video clips of autistic and non-autistic people. Participants rated different aspects of the stimulus model's academic experience, focusing on their motivation to study, academic success, grades, and happiness at university. Results:Across all measures, non-autistic participants judged the academic experience of autistic models more negatively than non-autistic models, perceiving lower academic motivation, success, grades, and happiness at university. Conclusion:These results demonstrate a consistent negative bias that autistic students may face from their peers at university. We discuss the importance of these results in terms of autism stigma and the potential consequences for improving inclusivity at university.

Humour plays a crucial role in children’s early interactions, likely promoting the development of social understanding and fostering positive social relationships. To date, the connection between humour production in peer play and the development of social understanding skills in middle childhood has received limited attention. In a community sample of 130 children residing in the UK ( M = 6.16 years old, range 5–7; 67 [51.5%] girls, 62 [47.7%] boys, and 1 [0.8%] non-binary child; 95 [73.1%] mothers and 85 [65.4%] fathers identified as Welsh, English, Scottish, or Irish), we tested our prediction that children’s use of humour in play with peers would be positively associated with children’s ability to understand the minds of others. We conducted detailed observational coding of children’s humour production during peer play and examined associations with children’s performance on a battery of social understanding assessments. Multilevel models showed that 42.8% of the variance in children’s humour production was explained by play partner effects. When controlling for the effect of play partner and other individual child characteristics (age, gender, receptive vocabulary) children’s spontaneous attributions of mental states were associated with humour production. Results are discussed considering how these playful exchanges reflect and influence the development of children’s socio-cognitive competencies.

Extensive research has examined empathy in autistic people; this has largely been conducted by asking autistic participants to complete measures and engage in experimental procedures or by consulting with close relatives. To the best of our knowledge, this study is one of the first to seek the views of autistic participants on their self-perceived empathic capacity. In this case, empathy was explored within a wider context of self-concept. The study recruited 100 participants who were asked to complete 10 statements about themselves. Subsequently, participants were asked to rate their self-perceived empathy on a scale of 1-10, providing justification for this. Autistic and non-autistic participants made a comparable proportion of references to numerous psychological traits. However, non-autistic participants made a higher proportion of references to being happy, friendly and caring. Autistic participants gave lower self-ratings of empathy compared to non-autistic participants; however, the thematic analysis showed that both groups felt they had cognitive and affective empathic capacity, with nuanced differences between the groups. This paper highlights the importance of involving autistic voices in research about their empathic capacity and self-concept, identifying nuance in the autistic experience that has been generally overlooked in previous research.