Mental-state and emotion understanding are important constructs for successful interpretation of behaviour and interaction with others. While false-belief understanding has been the main focus of investigations into children�s mentalising over the past 30 years, we now have tasks available that allow assessment of a broader range and more advanced set of mentalising skills amongst older age groups of typically developing young people (Baron-Cohen, Jolliffe, Mortimore, & Robertson, 1997a; Baron-Cohen, O�Riordan, Stone, Jones, & Plaisted, 1999; Happé, 1994). A recent trend has seen a shift away from investigating when children attain these skills towards examining individual differences in their performance. This has included consideration of both the factors that contribute to (Carlson & Moses, 2001; Hughes & Dunn, 1997; Meins et al., 2002; Milligan, Astington, & Dack, 2007; Ruffman, Slade, & Crowe, 2002), and the factors that are influenced by (Astington & Jenkins, 2000; Cassidy, Werner, Rourke, Zubernis, & Balaraman, 2003; Diesendruck & Ben-Eliyahu, Repacholi, Slaughter, Pritchard, & Gibbs, 2003) individual differences in mental-state understanding. One of the interesting questions in this area is what are the subsequent benefits or harm that individual differences in mentalising and emotion skills hold for children�s social competence? The current study investigates young people�s growing socioemotional understanding and how it is related to their social abilities, both prosocial and antisocial. The aims were to provide information on the relations amongst advanced mental-state skills, to investigate how these skills were related to emotion understanding, and, further, to investigate how socioemotional skills were related to social competence. The current study also extended the literature by addressing these aims amongst older children. Two studies were conducted, involving children (4- to 7-years) seen on four occasions in a three-year longitudinal study, and adolescents (13- to 17-years) in a cross-sectional study. There were a number of key findings. Individual differences in children�s advanced mental-state understanding are relatively stable across time, and the relations which they show with emotion skills are more consistent when examining tasks that shared skill sets. Language plays an important mediating role in the relation between socioemotional skills, although this influence appears to decrease with age. Mental-state and emotion understanding are both important for children and adolescents� social competence. It seems that greater socioemotional abilities influence prosocial behaviours, and poorer socioemotional abilities influence antisocial behaviours. Overall, the current study provides evidence that socioemotional skills are overlapping but distinct constructs, that they show varied interactions in social settings, and that future investigations of how children come to understand and interact with others will be best served by careful consideration of appropriate measures and by including multiple aspects of children�s social cognition.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Illinois State University, 2007. / Title from title page screen, viewed on March 11, 2008. Dissertation Committee: Steven E. Landau (chair), Alycia M. Hund, Dawn M. McBride, Glenn D. Reeder, Susan K, Sprecher. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 163-182) and abstract. Also available in print.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Delaware, 2007. / Principal faculty advisor: Aparna Bagdi, Dept. of Individual & Family Studies. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S.)--Brigham Young University. Dept. of Communication Disorders, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 69-78).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Toronto, 2007. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-05, Section: B, page: 3390. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 141-165).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Toronto, 2007. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-06, Section: B, page: 4126. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 161-187).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, Department of Psychology, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2004. / Supervisor: Elizabeth A. Vandewater. Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI company.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1958. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 220-223).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego and San Diego State University, 2009. / Title from first page of PDF file (viewed June 16, 2009). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 109-134).