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.

The current study examined relations between temperamental reactivity at 6 months and social competence in first grade, including if emotion regulation at 54 months played a role as mediator and/or moderator between temperamental reactivity and social competence in first grade. Previous studies have shown that children who are high on temperamental reactivity early on will have poorer social competence in the future (Houck, 1999). This study explored how emotion regulation might mediate this relationship as well as how emotion regulation may serve as a protective factor (e.g., moderator) for those with higher temperamental reactivity. Important background characteristics of child gender and ethnicity, mother's education, and income-to-needs ratio were controlled for. Results indicated that temperamental reactivity at 6 months did not play a significant role in social competence in first grade, nor on emotion regulation at 54 months. Emotion regulation at 54 months was also found to be neither a mediator nor a moderator between this relationship between temperamental reactivity and social competence. The only significant relationship that was found was that between emotion regulation at 54 months and social competence in first grade, which aligns with previous research. / Graduation date: 2013

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Alabama at Birmingham, 2009. / Title from PDF title page (viewed Jan. 22, 2010). Includes bibliographical references (p. 47-54).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2001. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 117-123). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2001. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 117-123). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (M.A.)--The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2008. / Directed by Susan P. Keane; submitted to the Dept. of Psychology. Title from PDF t.p. (viewed Jan. 28, 2010). Includes bibliographical references (p. 31-39).

Not available / text

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

No description available.

This study examined the effects of cooperative learning combined with the philosophy of Challenged education on social skill and self concept development. The participants were sixth grade students from two different classrooms in a rural midwestern school district. One class was the control and the other the experimental group.During a nine week intervention the experimental group was involved with cooperative learning/Challenge Education while the control group maintained their usual schedule that did not include cooperative learning/Challenge Education. Previous to and following the intervention, the students' social skills were rated by themselves, their teachers, and their parents. In addition, the students rated their own academic and nonacademic self concepts. Measurement tools used were standardized assessment instruments.Two separate multivariate analysis of variance were computed: one for social skills and one for self concept. Following the social skills MANOVA simple interaction effects analyses were calculated followed by simple effects analysis. The results of the MANOVA revealed a significant interaction between time of testing and treatment when examining social skills. Significant interactions were found for parent ratings and teacher ratings. The students' ratings did not reveal a significant interaction. The simple effects analyses for teacher reports revealed the teachers' ratings of students' social skills differed on the pretest; however, the posttest did not reveal a significant difference between group's social skills. No effect were found on the self-concept scale. It was concluded that the intervention may not have produced the desired effects because students had attained only the awareness level of development according to the challenge education model. Therefore, further research using awareness as the outcome seems warranted. / Department of Educational Psychology