Adolescence is an age of heightened social exploration with peers, requiring the development of increasingly sophisticated social and cognitive skills. The present study focuses on Theory of Mind (ToM), defined as the ability to infer others’ mental states and to use them to make sense of social behaviors.

We aimed to explore the associations between individual differences in ToM and in children’s peer relationships in the context of the classroom. While past research has shown a bidirectional association between peer relationships and advanced ToM abilities in middle childhood, the developmental phase of adolescence has been largely overlooked.

To address this gap, 189 adolescents (age-range: 10 - 15; M = 11.89, SD = 0.97, 80 F) were tested in class-group sessions at two time-points (5 months apart) in a short-term longitudinal study. At both time-points (T1 and T2), we asked participants to complete two advanced ToM tasks, the Strange Stories and Silent Films, and evaluated adolescents’ peer relationships (both rejection and popularity) using the sociometric nominations. At Time 1 we also measured children’s verbal ability and socioeconomic status as control variables.

Preliminary results via linear regressions showed a significant association across time between ToM and peer relationships. In particular, higher peer rejection at T1 significantly predicted later lower ToM abilities controlling for verbal ability, socioeconomic status and ToM at T1 (β = -.02, p < .05). No significant effect of early peer popularity on later ToM was found. Analyses via latent change score models are ongoing.

These results contribute to the existing literature, highlighting the adverse effect of peer rejection on adolescents’ development. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.

Background: Self-regulation is continuous and dynamic adaptation of emotions, behavior, and cognition in goal-directed actions. Previous research has associated it with academic achievement, yet the definitions vary by research perspectives and are not often integrated. This study researches self-regulation from a cognitive perspective by examining the core facets of executive functions: working memory, inhibition, and cognitive flexibility. Also, it includes a developmental perspective by Rothbart’s temperament model and its temperament dimensions, effortful control, surgency, and negative affectivity. Furthermore, it includes the child’s real-time regulation in learning situations assessed by parents and teachers.

Objectives: This study seeks insights into associations between temperament, executive functions, and everyday self-regulation in learning situations with academic achievement in children. It focuses on early adolescents, while most previous research on self-regulation focuses on younger children.

Methods: The participants of the study (n=190) were Finnish 6th graders (median age 12 years), who performed executive functions tasks. The students also answered a temperament questionnaire (Rothbart’s EATQ-R Short). Parents and teachers were asked to assess students’ self-regulation in homework and learning situations at school by questionnaires.

Results: After controlling for gender, parents’ education, fluid intelligence, and learning difficulties, of the investigated temperament dimensions, effortful control was associated with higher teacher and parent-reported self-regulation in learning situations, and poorer working memory and inhibition. Surgency was negatively associated with cognitive flexibility. Furthermore, higher cognitive flexibility and teacher-reported self-regulation predicted better academic achievement. Finally, higher effortful control predicted higher teacher-reported self-regulation in learning situations, which further contributed to better academic achievement. Also, cognitive flexibility mediated the association between surgency and subsequent academic achievement.

Discussion: This study deepened the understanding of the role of self-regulation in learning outcomes and the underlying mechanisms. This knowledge is needed to better target effective educational supporting interventions and recognize children at risk for difficulties in self-regulation.

Many situations require coordinating decisions with others without communicating. To navigate this social uncertainty, adults have been shown to tune their decisions to the cooperative or competitive incentives at play. Here, we investigate if this ability is stable or increases with age during development. Specifically, because adolescence involves increasing levels of social uncertainty, we hypothesized that this period could be a particularly important age to learn how to adapt decisions to cooperative and competitive environments.

722 participants aged 9 to 26 completed a tacit coordination task that we adapted for youths. Participants aimed to maximize “gold coins” by choosing between a low-paying safe option and a higher-paying but uncertain option. In the cooperative condition, two paired anonymous participants could both maximize coins if they both chose the uncertain option without communicating. In the competitive condition, only one participant could maximize coins by choosing the uncertain option alone; if both chose it, neither won. A non-social control condition used a random lottery. No feedback was provided, so participants could only rely on the incentives at play.

We found that, in the cooperative relative to the competitive and control conditions, participants were more likely to choose the uncertain option, and this tendency increased markedly during adolescence. Moreover, in the competitive relative to the other conditions, adults displayed heightened decision variability and longer response times, while the youngest participants in our sample, nine-year-olds, did not. This competitive decision-making signature only emerged during adolescence and continued increasing into adulthood.

These results suggest that adolescence is a particularly important age for the development of strategic abilities. Our newly developed measure is available open access and online, and it could be used to track typical and atypical social development.

During adolescence, peer relations become increasingly pivotal for personal and social development, yet little is known about the association between coordination abilities and actual peer relationships in the classroom. Here we use a behavioral game-theory approach to measure adolescents’ ability to coordinate with their peers without communicating in cooperative vs. competitive decision environments, and we investigate their association with social integration in peer networks.

462 participants (age 9-20) completed two economic coordination games to maximize “gold coins” without feedback while playing with an anonymous peer. Both games involved a series of choices between two options: a variable and lower paying but sure option (e.g., 4 coins), and a potentially higher paying but “risky” one (15 coins or 0). In a cooperative game, coins were maximized if both players risked together. In contrast, in the competitive game, only one player could maximize coins by choosing the uncertain option alone: if both chose it, neither won. We measured peer relationships via peer nomination techniques (most-liked and least-liked), and non-verbal intelligence with a matrix reasoning task (MARS). We employed social network analysis to map peer networks using liked and disliked nominations separately to investigate how individual network positions are related to strategic abilities.

Results indicated that those who took more risk in competition were also less central in the network of most liked individuals (t(1372)= -2.54,p <.05), while those who displayed greater decision variability in competition were less central in the network of least liked peers t(1365)= -2.42,p <.05), over and above non-verbal IQ. Additionally, adolescents with greater non-verbal intelligence were more central in networks of most liked peers but were less central in networks of least liked peers.

These findings suggest that the ability to coordinate with peers without communicating, especially in competitive contexts, is associated with one's position in social networks.

Distinguishing between fear and surprise expressions is challenging. Previous research has reported a dynamic advantage in recognizing surprise, but not fear (Rodger et al., 2015; Richoz et al., 2018). Eye movement strategies to recognize these expressions are distinct and vary across ages (Rodger, 2023). However, whether and how the diagnostic information used to recognize these expressions varies across ages and stimulus modalities remains unknown.

To address this, we used the “Bubbles” reverse correlation technique to isolate the diagnostic information for static and dynamic facial expression recognition (FER) tasks in children and young adults. Eighty 6-9-year-olds, seventy 10-13-year-olds, and sixty young adults (18-30 years old) participated. The number of bubbles was set a priori and varied according to age group to target equivalent performance levels across groups (adults need less information, fewer bubbles per trial to achieve equivalent performance to children).

As expected, each group performed better at recognizing both expressions when presented dynamically, with the exception of fear in 6-9-year-old group. Interestingly, the confusion between fear and surprise was significantly weaker in the dynamic condition in every age group. Additionally, the diagnostic information for accurately distinguishing the two expressions varied according to both modality and age group. While 6-9-year-olds primarily relied on the mouth, additional diagnostic areas such as the eyebrows were included for dynamic presentations. In contrast, for 10-13-year-olds, the diagnostic pattern for static presentations included the eye region. The patterns observed for the 10-13-year-olds resembled those of the adult group.

In conclusion, dynamic facial expressions modulated information use and improved FER performance. Our data reveal the developmental trajectories and facial features involved in recognizing fear and surprise across different modalities. The well-established confusion between fear and surprise expressions was strongly rooted to the presentation modality across ages, offering novel insights into this perceptual affective phenomenon.