The relationships among social cognition, peer acceptance, and social behavior in Israeli kindergarteners

2006 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gil Diesendruck ◽  
Adar Ben-Eliyahu

The present study investigated the relationships among Israeli kindergarten children's social cognitive capacities, their popularity, and their social behavior. We found that children's understanding of others' behavioral motives was positively related to their popularity, that children's false-belief understanding was positively related to peers' positive behavioral and teachers' prosocial evaluations of them, and that children's understanding of emotions was positively related to teachers' prosocial ratings but negatively related to both peers' negative behavioral and teachers' aggressiveness evaluations of them. Moreover, we found that Israeli kindergarten children value the same kinds of social behaviors in their peers as do children from other cultures. The findings substantiate the importance of assessing the implications of a variety of socio-cognitive capacities to the social functioning of young children from diverse cultures.

2005 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 271-281 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pamela W. Garner ◽  
Stephanie M. Curenton ◽  
Kelli Taylor

Two studies investigated the influence of age, language, and family background on the development of preschoolers' social cognitive skills. Study 1 examined variability in economically disadvantaged preschoolers' understanding of fantasy and evaluated the relation of age and language to children's skill in this area. Children were shown drawings of fantasy and real-life events and asked if the event could happen in real life and to justify their responses. Children were more likely to answer correctly when the drawing depicted real-life events. Age and language were positively related to children's overall understanding of fantasy. In Study 2, both low and middle SES preschoolers were included and two false belief understanding measures were added to the battery of tasks. As before, age and language were related to fantasy understanding as well as to false belief performance. In addition, SES was predictive of fantasy understanding, but not false belief performance, regardless of how it was assessed. Social competence was unrelated to the social cognitive variables, even when the effects of age, language, and SES were controlled.


2009 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 331-336 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yifang Wang ◽  
Yanjie Su

Two experiments were conducted to compare the false belief understanding of children who have no siblings, but have classmates of different ages in kindergarten. In Experiment 1, 4- and 5-year-olds completed two unexpected location tasks. We found that 4-year-olds with classmates of different ages performed significantly better than those with classmates of the same age. This result was replicated in a larger sample in Experiment 2 in which the children were asked to complete an unexpected location task and an unexpected content task. The findings suggested that the presence of minds with varied ages stimulates the social cognitive understanding of young children, particularly for 4-year-olds. The findings of the present study give a particularly clear view of the effect of classmates of different ages on young children's theory of mind development, extending findings in other research on the advantage of having siblings.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rhideeta Jalal ◽  
Aarti Nair ◽  
Amy Lin ◽  
Ariel Eckfeld ◽  
Leila Kushan ◽  
...  

Abstract Background: 22q11.2 deletion syndrome (22q11DS) is a common recurrent neurogenetic condition associated with elevated risk for developmental neuropsychiatric disorders and intellectual disability. Children and adults with 22q11DS often exhibit marked social impairment as well as neurocognitive deficits, and have elevated rates of both autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and psychosis. However, the relationship between the basic processes of social cognition and cognitive ability has not been well studied in 22q11DS. Here, we examined differences in social cognition in 22q11DS, relative to multiple groups of idiopathic neuropsychiatric disorders, and typically developing healthy controls (HC). Additionally, we examined differences in intellectual functioning and its relationship to social cognitive abilities. Finally, we examined the relationship between social cognitive abilities and real-world social behavior. Methods: We examined social cognition and intellectual functioning in 273 participants (mean age = 17.74+/-5.18% female = 44.3%): 50 with 22q11DS, 49 youth with first episode psychosis (FEP), 48 at clinical high-risk (CHR) for psychosis, 24 participants with ASD, and 102 HC. Social cognition was assessed using The Awareness of Social Inference Test (TASIT), while reciprocal social behavior was assessed via parent/caregiver ratings on the Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS). Participants were also administered the Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence, 2 nd edition (WASI-II) to assess intellectual functioning. Results: The 22q11DS group exhibited significantly lower social cognitive abilities compared to all other groups, even after controlling for intellectual functioning. Significant positive correlations were found between social cognition, as measured by the TASIT, and IQ across groups. In contrast, no significant relationships were found between TASIT and real-world social behavior (SRS) for any group. Conclusions: Our findings indicate social cognitive deficits are more prominent in 22q11DS than idiopathic neuropsychiatric conditions across the age range, even after adjusting for global intellectual function. These results contribute to our understanding of the intellectual and social vulnerabilities of 22q11DS in comparison to idiopathic neuropsychiatric disorders. Our findings of robust associations between intellectual ability and social cognition emphasizes the importance of accounting for neurocognitive deficits in social skills interventions and tailoring these existing treatment models for 22q11DS and other populations with intellectual impairment.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rhideeta Jalal ◽  
Aarti Nair ◽  
Amy Lin ◽  
Ariel Eckfeld ◽  
Leila Kushan ◽  
...  

Abstract Background 22q11.2 deletion syndrome (22q11DS) is a common recurrent neurogenetic condition associated with elevated risk for developmental neuropsychiatric disorders and intellectual disability. Children and adults with 22q11DS often exhibit marked social impairment as well as neurocognitive deficits, and have elevated rates of both autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and psychosis. However, the relationship between the basic processes of social cognition and cognitive ability has not been well studied in 22q11DS. Here, we examined differences in social cognition in 22q11DS, relative to multiple groups of idiopathic neuropsychiatric disorders, and typically developing healthy controls (HC). Additionally, we examined differences in intellectual functioning and its relationship to social cognitive abilities. Finally, we examined the relationship between social cognitive abilities and real-world social behavior. Methods We examined social cognition and intellectual functioning in 306 participants (mean age = 16.63+/-4.59; % female = 44.8%): sixty-eight with 22q11DS, 49 youth with first episode psychosis (FEP), 48 at clinical high-risk (CHR) for psychosis, 24 participants with ASD, and 117 HC. Social cognition was assessed using The Awareness of Social Inference Test (TASIT), while reciprocal social behavior was assessed via parent/caregiver ratings on the Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS). Participants were also administered the Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence, 2 nd edition (WASI-II) to assess intellectual functioning. Results The 22q11DS group exhibited significantly lower social cognitive abilities compared to all other groups, even after controlling for intellectual functioning. Significant positive correlations were found between social cognition, as measured by the TASIT, and IQ across groups. In contrast, no significant relationships were found between TASIT and real-world social behavior (SRS) for any group. Conclusions Our findings indicate social cognitive deficits are more prominent in 22q11DS than idiopathic neuropsychiatric conditions across the age range, even after adjusting for global intellectual function. These results contribute to our understanding of the intellectual and social vulnerabilities of 22q11DS in comparison to idiopathic neuropsychiatric disorders. Our findings of robust associations between intellectual ability and social cognition emphasizes the importance of accounting for neurocognitive deficits in social skills interventions and tailoring these existing treatment models for 22q11DS and other populations with intellectual impairment.


Women ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 204-211
Author(s):  
Marina Verdaguer-Rodríguez ◽  
Raquel López-Carrilero ◽  
Marta Ferrer-Quintero ◽  
Helena García-Mieres ◽  
Luciana Díaz-Cutraro ◽  
...  

The aim of this study was to explore gender differences in social cognition in a sample of first-episode psychosis (FEP). An observational descriptive study was performed with 191 individuals with FEP. Emotion perception was assessed using the Faces Test, theory of mind was assessed using the Hinting Task, and attributional style was assessed using the Internal, Personal and Situational Attributions Questionnaire. No gender differences were found in any of the social cognitive domains. Our results suggest that men and women with FEP achieve similar performances in social cognition. Therefore, targeting specific needs in social cognition regarding gender may not be required in early interventions for psychosis.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Arioli ◽  
Chiara Crespi ◽  
Nicola Canessa

Social cognition refers to a set of processes, ranging from perception to decision-making, underlying the ability to decode others’ intentions and behaviors to plan actions fitting with social and moral, besides individual and economic considerations. Its centrality in everyday life reflects the neural complexity of social processing and the ubiquity of social cognitive deficits in different pathological conditions. Social cognitive processes can be clustered in three domains associated with (a) perceptual processing of social information such as faces and emotional expressions (social perception), (b) grasping others’ cognitive or affective states (social understanding), and (c) planning behaviors taking into consideration others’, in addition to one’s own, goals (social decision-making). We review these domains from the lens of cognitive neuroscience, i.e., in terms of the brain areas mediating the role of such processes in the ability to make sense of others’ behavior and plan socially appropriate actions. The increasing evidence on the “social brain” obtained from healthy young individuals nowadays constitutes the baseline for detecting changes in social cognitive skills associated with physiological aging or pathological conditions. In the latter case, impairments in one or more of the abovementioned domains represent a prominent concern, or even a core facet, of neurological (e.g., acquired brain injury or neurodegenerative diseases), psychiatric (e.g., schizophrenia), and developmental (e.g., autism) disorders. To pave the way for the other papers of this issue, addressing the social cognitive deficits associated with severe acquired brain injury, we will briefly discuss the available evidence on the status of social cognition in normal aging and its breakdown in neurodegenerative disorders. Although the assessment and treatment of such impairments is a relatively novel sector in neurorehabilitation, the evidence summarized here strongly suggests that the development of remediation procedures for social cognitive skills will represent a future field of translational research in clinical neuroscience.


2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (6) ◽  
pp. 579-589 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cora E Mukerji ◽  
Sarah Hope Lincoln ◽  
David Dodell-Feder ◽  
Charles A Nelson ◽  
Christine I Hooker

ABSTRACT Theory of mind (ToM), the capacity to reason about others’ mental states, is central to healthy social development. Neural mechanisms supporting ToM may contribute to individual differences in children’s social cognitive behavior. Employing a false belief functional magnetic resonance imaging paradigm, we identified patterns of neural activity and connectivity elicited by ToM reasoning in school-age children (N = 32, ages 9–13). Next, we tested relations between these neural ToM correlates and children’s everyday social cognition. Several key nodes of the neural ToM network showed greater activity when reasoning about false beliefs (ToM condition) vs non-mentalistic false content (control condition), including the bilateral temporoparietal junction (RTPJ and LTPJ), precuneus (PC) and right superior temporal sulcus. In addition, children demonstrated task-modulated changes in connectivity among these regions to support ToM relative to the control condition. ToM-related activity in the PC was negatively associated with variation in multiple aspects of children’s social cognitive behavior. Together, these findings elucidate how nodes of the ToM network act and interact to support false belief reasoning in school-age children and suggest that neural ToM mechanisms are linked to variation in everyday social cognition.


Author(s):  
Stefanie Lis ◽  
Nicole E. Derish ◽  
M. Mercedes Perez-Rodriguez

Changes in social cognition are increasingly recognized as core illness features in the personality disorders with a broad impact on social functioning. Despite the significant disability caused by social cognitive dysfunction, treatments for this symptom dimension tailored to the specific deficits of a disorder are still missing. This chapter characterizes the different domains of social cognitive processing and describes different approaches and instruments for measuring impairments. It provides a short overview of the evidence demonstrating changes in social cognition in schizotypal personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, and antisocial and avoidant personality disorder, as well as the neurobiology of social cognition. During the recent past the number of studies addressing this topic increased tremendously. Nevertheless, research in this area is still young and requires approaches that study these functions while emphasizing the social context and associate deficits observed in experimental paradigms with interpersonal dysfunction during every-day life.


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