Ivymount Social Cognition Instructional Project (IvySCIP) supports teachers and related service providers to implement data-driven social and emotional learning (SEL) instruction for their kindergarten through 5th grade students with social cognition challenges, especially those with high functioning autism spectrum disorders (HF-ASD). Based on…

Research extensively highlights the importance of social-emotional skills in learning and development. In this study, we evaluated whether social and emotional variables directly impact students' perceived cognitive competence and academic performance through a structural equation model. Survey responses (N = 29,384) were collected from 114 K-12…

Montessori pedagogy is a century-old, whole-school system increasingly used in the public sector. In the United States, public Montessori schools are typically Title I schools that mostly serve children of color. The present secondary, exploratory data analysis examined outcomes of 134 children who entered a lottery for admission to public…

First-order and advanced theory of mind (ToM and AToM), and their structures and relations were investigated in 229 children aged 5-8 years. ToM was assessed using 6 tasks from the first-order ToM scale, while AToM was measured using an 18-item battery (higher-order false-belief understanding; strange stories; faux pas test; eyes test;…

Do social cognition and epistemological understanding promote elementary school children's experimentation skills? To investigate this question, 402 children (ages 8, 9, and 10) in 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grades were assessed for their experimentation skills, social cognition (advanced theory of mind [AToM]), epistemological understanding (understanding…

Self-regulation and social cognition flourish as children begin school and engage with a new social environment. At the same time, this novel setting provides more complex social situations that children must navigate, including understanding when others may be lying to them. Social cognition and self regulatory abilities, such as Theory of Mind…

Background: This study examined whether social-cognitive processes in children mediate relations between mothers' depressive symptoms across the first 3 years and children's first-grade social competence. Three maladaptive cognitions were examined: self-perceived social inadequacy, hostile attribution, and aggressive response generation.…

Research Findings: Research with older children and adults reliably demonstrates that individuals raised in poverty tend to evaluate concerns related to moral concerns (i.e., related to harm, welfare, and justice) differently than do wealthier individuals. However, little work has examined these patterns in young children. Children (N=214, Mage =…

The purpose of this article is to describe a school-based, integrated arts programme designed to facilitate social and emotional learning (SEL) in young children with social cognitive challenges, and to report on student outcomes. Students received weekly arts instruction over the course of one academic semester as part of their social studies…

With nearly half of all children under age six living in poverty, it is imperative to explore the development of income-related childhood aggression. Here, we specifically examine how family socioeconomic status (SES) relates to children's physical and relational aggression, and how this relation may be moderated by burgeoning social cognition.…

Using an experimental approach, our study examined the differentiated effects on pre-schoolers' social cognition of two short-term social information processing (SIP) and Theory of Mind (ToM) training sessions dealing with emotions and beliefs. The links between ToM, SIP, and social adjustment or externalizing behavior were examined. 47…

Research Findings: This research examines preschoolers' use of mental state terms in naturally occurring peer conflicts in the classroom to determine how children use mental state terms for organizing their social interactions. Analyses focus on the types, frequencies, and social interactive functions of mental state terms. Utterances (N = 166)…

The influence of culture on cognitive development is well established for school age and older children. But almost nothing is known about how different parenting and socialization practices in different cultures affect infants' and young children's earliest emerging cognitive and social-cognitive skills. In the current monograph, we report a…

Two assumptions that underlie much research in early childhood music education are that music is a social endeavor and musical participation is beneficial to children's overall social development. As members of cultural and social groups, young children engage with music in a multitude of ways and with different companions. This article examines…

Background: Although distinctive neuropsychological impairments have been delineated in children with chromosome 22q11 deletion syndrome (22q11DS), social skills and social cognition remain less well-characterised. Objective: To examine social skills and social cognition and their relationship with neuropsychological function/behaviour and…