Despite empirical support for relations between parents’ mentalizing skills and children’s theory of mind (ToM), two key markers of parental mentalisation – mind-mindedness (MM; the proclivity to view one’s child as a mental agent with independent thoughts, feelings and desires) and everyday mental-state talk (MST; verbal labelling of one’s child’s thoughts, emotions, desires, and intentions) – are rarely studied in tandem (for an exception, see Devine & Hughes, 2017). This is a significant gap, as understanding the relative salience of MM and MST is important for developing interventions to support children’s socio-cognitive development. A further limitation in the field is the lack of cultural diversity in study samples.

Addressing these twin gaps, this study investigates the uniqueness and specificity of associations between parental MM, MST, and young children’s ToM in 307 parent-child dyads (48% girls; Mage = 5.32 years, SD = 0.66) living in mainland China. During a one-hour home-based online session, children completed tests of ToM and verbal ability. Separately, parents completed the five-minute-speech sample paradigm (Gottschalk & Gleser, 2022), enabling transcripts of speech samples to be coded for MM (indexed by the proportion of mentalistic child-focused descriptions). Parent-child interactions of up to 8 minutes using the Etch-a-Sketch Online were recorded, transcribed, and coded for the total frequency of mental-state terms, including cognitions, emotions, desires, and intentions.

Preliminary analyses revealed that MM and MST were modestly related. Importantly, each showed positive associations (of similar strength, b ≈ .25) with individual differences in ToM performance. This suggests that, even within an Eastern cultural context influenced by ancient Chinese philosophy – where language primarily serves to guide actions and maintain social interactions rather than to convey thoughts and beliefs – variation in MM and MST still holds meaningful significance for young children’s understanding of other minds.

The recent expansion of research beyond the preschool years has enabled researchers to address new questions concerning the interplay between children's mindreading and their school life. Within this emerging field, we examined whether children's individual differences in Theory of Mind (ToM) during preschool and primary school years influence their academic achievement. We report the results of a meta-analysis examining the existence, the direction and the uniqueness of the relationship between ToM and two core dimensions of children’s academic success: reading comprehension and math abilities. Following the PRISMA guidelines, we conducted a systematic search of relevant empirical papers published between the year 1978 (the year in which Premack and Woodruff first coined the term ‘theory of mind’) and August 2024 by accessing the following databases Scopus, PsycINFO, and Web of Science, on 1st August, 2024. We screened 1158 papers and selected a total of 54 studies involving 12,671 participants (about 52% male). Results revealed a pooled z-transformed Pearson’s correlation of r = 0.32 CI [.28, .36], p < .001, which was significant for both math and reading comprehension. This association was stable, as evidenced by their consistency regardless of participants’ (age and gender) and ToM tasks’ characteristics (level of mentalization, task modality, Category of mental state, response type). Crucially, the association between ToM and academic achievement was independent of children’s verbal ability, socio-economic status and executive functions and was significant both concurrently and longitudinally, operating in both directions: from early ToM skills predicting later academic outcomes and vice versa. The findings of this meta-analysis provide important theoretical insights into the relationship between ToM and academic achievement, highlighting the need to integrate cognitive and social dimensions of development. They also provide some important practical insight and suggestions for educational practices.

Alongside well-established links between children’s mentalizing skills and markers of social competence such as prosocial behaviour and popularity, recent work indicates that mentalizing skills also contribute to children’s academic success. Yet few studies have attempted to integrate these two strands of research. Likewise, studies of the socio-cognitive underpinnings of children’s social and academic success rarely adopt a dual focus on both mentalizing and self-regulatory skills. This field is also limited by a narrow focus on Western samples and a heavy reliance on cross-sectional designs.

To address these challenges, we report on longitudinal analyses from England and Hong Kong. Two waves of zoom-based remote assessments (13-months apart) were completed for 191 English children (54% girls; T1 Mage = 5.36 years) and 156 Hong Kong children (47% girls; T1 Mage = 5.01 years) who, at each time-point received three tests of executive function (EF) and three theory-of-mind (ToM) tasks. Academic competence was indexed via the WPPSI receptive vocabulary subtest and the Harter Self-Perception academic subscale. Social competence was indexed by parental Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire ratings of prosocial behaviour and teachers’ ratings on the Social Skills Interaction System (Gresham & Elliot, 2008). Within each site, we applied hierarchical regression analyses to assess the independence and specificity of our EF and ToM measures as predictors of latent change scores for children’s academic and social competence, respectively. In England, ToM was specifically associated with gains in social competence and EF was specifically associated with gains in academic competence, even controlling for background measures. By contrast, our preliminary findings from Hong Kong indicate that both academic and social outcomes are related to individual differences in EF but not ToM. We will discuss this site contrast in results in relation to both cultural factors and differences in children’s pedagogical experiences during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The primary goal of our study is to investigate whether theory of mind (ToM) understanding varies based on the characteristics of the characters. Specifically, we examine whether children in middle childhood infer the mental states of in-group characters more accurately than those of out-group characters. Our idea builds on a 2020 study by Gönültaş and colleagues, which explored behaviors toward individuals from different cultural backgrounds (Turkish, Syrian, and ‘North European’ citizens), focusing on the influence of negative stereotypes and knowledge about others. In contrast, our study examines whether the accuracy of mental state inferences differs between characters with and without disabilities.

At the moment we are gathering data from around 250 typically developing children in Italy and in Poland, aged 10-11. We have developed 8 stories, based on Strange Stories, in which the character has/does not have one of four kinds of disabilities (hearing / visual / intellectual / physical) covering understanding of white lie, misunderstanding, persuasion, and double bluff. Additionally, we assess children’s attitudes toward peers with disabilities and on empathy, as well their verbal skills and their executive functions. We expect that children will better understand the characters without disability, but the better general ToM development children have the less differences they show in understanding characters with and without disabilities. Moreover, we assume that belonging to a classroom with peers with disabilities in comparison with classrooms with only typically developing peers may eliminate/reduce the differences in understanding characters with and without disabilities. The study has important implications for children’s integration and understanding.