It has been argued that children who possess an advanced theory of mind (ToM) are more likely to act prosocially, yet the empirical findings are mixed. To address this issue definitively, a meta-analytic integration of all prior literature that met appropriate inclusion criteria was conducted. In total, 76 studies including 6,432 children between…

Background: A deficit in empathy is discussed to underlie difficulties in social interaction of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and conduct disorder (CD). To date, no study has compared children with ASD and different subtypes of CD to describe disorder-specific empathy profiles in clinical samples. Furthermore, little is known about…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the agreement between parent and teacher perceptions of specific social behaviors in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Method: Informant ratings were generated concerning 45 children with ASD between the ages of 5 and 14 years who were enrolled in social skills groups at 2 Midwestern…

Examined the relationship between perspective taking in response to another's distress and prosocial behavior and dispositional affective empathy in late childhood. The tendency to reflect spontaneously on the inner experience of others who are unfortunate was positively related to prosocial behavior in boys and to affective empathy in both sexes.…

Twenty male and twenty female third graders expected boy characters to retaliate more strongly than girl characters when intervening in an attack upon a friend and girl characters to retaliate more strongly than boys when being verbally or physically assaulted. (Author/KH)

Although role or perspective taking has been considered important for the development of mature social thought and behavior, and training for perspective taking has been used to remediate deficient behavior, few studies with either normal or disturbed populations have examined naturally occurring behaviors expected to correlate with…

Studied age differences in children's understanding of (1) changes in emotional reactions to situations; and (2) the possibility that emotion might be controlled by situational or cognitive strategies. Children aged 4 to 15 years were more likely to suggest situational strategies than cognitive strategies for controlling emotion. (Author/GH)

Results of two studies investigating children's abilities to use different kinds of cues to infer another's affective state are reported in this paper. In the first study, 48 children (3, 4, and 6 to 7 years of age) were given three different kinds of tasks (interpersonal task, facial recognition task, and vocal recognition task). A cross-age…

A developmental model for an empathy-based prosocial motive is presented. The framework of the model is presented in terms of three components of empathy. The first component, empathic affective arousal, is discussed and six involuntary psychological mechanisms which underlie it are described briefly. These mechanisms, in the order in which they…

This paper discussed a stage theory of childhood, preadolescent, and adolescent concepts of role-relationships and social reasoning in friendship. It was hypothesized that these concepts develop through levels of perspective-taking, within which individuals view and structure interpersonal relationships. At level one, relationships are based on…