The ability to recursively infer the mental states of others to explain their complex behavior in ambiguous social situation may be called Advanced Theory of Mind (aToM). The relations between two components of aToM, cognitive and affective, measured on a behavioral level in 151 Polish 13-year-olds and 174 16-year-olds was examined. The role of age, gender and friendship style and its relations to the cognitive and affective aToM was explored. Cognitive aToM was only weakly to moderately related to affective aToM. Across both age groups females scored higher than males. Males' aToM abilities did not differ according to age, but they scored higher in the cognitive aToM than affective ToM. Also, different aspects of friendship style were significant predictors of both aToM abilities. The implications for two aToM components within a gendered social context were discussed.

Introduction Although much is known about theory of mind (ToM) development during childhood, data on how these skills develop in adolescence is scarce. This cavity is due in part to the limited knowledge about measures of advanced theory of mind. Methods The study examined the relation among six common story‐based tasks designed to measure advanced ToM in two age groups of Polish adolescents: early (13‐year‐olds; 78 girls) and late (16‐year‐olds; 143 girls) adolescents. Results Factor models for individual tasks were constructed, followed by an examination of the underlying structure that explained the variability of factor scores. Only in half of the tasks, the results revealed an age‐related increase in advanced ToM. Contrary to expectation, results showed a lack of correlations among story‐based advanced ToM tasks in the two adolescent groups. Conclusions The results suggest a lack of coherence among advanced story‐based ToM tasks and the need for further development of reliable and valid advanced ToM measures which are sensitive enough to show increasingly complex social reasoning abilities in adolescence.

Recent research suggests that social cognitive abilities, particularly the theory of mind (ToM), play a role in the development of persuasion in early and middle childhood. This study investigated the relations between children’s intentionality understanding and early persuasive skills, especially the ability to use direct and indirect persuasive strategies in symmetric and asymmetric relational context. Ninety-five 5- to 7-year-olds participated in a narrative task that described persuasive situations with parents and peers and answered questions in intentionality understanding stories. Results showed that participants used indirect strategies less often than direct proposals. To persuade their parents, participants used more direct than indirect persuasive strategies, while this difference was not significant for peer persuasion. Correlation analysis revealed that independent of age and expressive language ability, intentionality understanding significantly predicted participants’ number of persuasive proposals and the use of direct and indirect bilateral persuasive strategies. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

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