Читать книгу The Wiley-Blackwell Handbook of Childhood Social Development - Группа авторов - Страница 28

In addition to the self, investigators explored children’s cognitions about others. Principal foci included research on children’s inferences about others’ mental states and psychological traits (e.g., intentions, personalities), and their ability to use these and other insights to negotiate interactions and solve social problems.

Research on theory of mind helped to clarify when children begin to draw inferences about others’ thoughts and beliefs, and how they utilize these conjectures to forecast their own and others’ social behavior. Evidence suggested that abilities such as these emerged during early childhood, were refined throughout middle childhood, and were instrumental in the development of social competence (Harris, 2006).

Investigators also studied children’s inferences about others’ psychological characteristics and traits. Findings implied that children begin to make trait attributions during early childhood and differentiate among people on this basis about the time they enter school. Studies of older age groups suggested that children increasingly regard others’ traits as stable, and utilize these attributions to interpret others’ motives and behaviors (Flavell et al., 2002).

Broader, more dynamic frameworks were developed and tested as a means of explicating the combination of social‐cognitive processes that enabled children to cope with complex interpersonal tasks, such as provocations and conflict. The dominant models developed for this purpose were based on information processing and social learning theories (Dodge, 1986).

Among the constructs postulated within these models were those representing operations deemed essential for gathering, interpreting, and storing social information, and for retrieving and utilizing social information to guide social behavior. These models spurred investigation and findings linked the hypothesized social‐cognitive processes with numerous indicators of children’s social behavior (e.g., aggression; Gifford‐Smith & Rabiner, 2004).