We investigated relationships between Chinese children's imaginary companions (ICs) and peer relationships and social competence in 160 children, aged 5-6 years old. Children and their mothers participated in the interviews regarding the details of the children's ICs, including the type of the companion and the quality of the child-IC relationship. Peer relationships were assessed using sociometric nomination and perceived popularity nomination. Teachers rated children's social competence. Here, 55 children (34.3%) were deemed to have engaged in imaginary companion play. There was no relationship between imaginary companion types and child-IC relationship qualities. Children with invisible friends received more positive nominations than children with personified objects. Children with egalitarian relationships received more positive nominations and popularity nominations, but fewer negative nominations and unpopularity nominations than children with hierarchical relationships. Compared with children with hierarchical relationships, teachers rated the children with egalitarian relationships higher in social competence. The results suggest that imaginary companion types and relationship qualities may represent different dimensions of imaginary companions, calling attentions to the different mechanisms underlying imaginary companion types and relationship qualities with respect to social functioning.

Many property issues in real life occur in the transfer contexts. Previous studies have investigated the role of creation and value change in people's use of the labor rule when solving property issues involving conflicting cues between labor and first possession, but have neglected the possible effect of transfer types. This study explored how items get transferred from the original owner to the next affected adults' use of the labor rule when assigning ownership. Eighty‐two participants (Mage = 22.10 years) read some scenarios in which a person modified some redwoods into a set of furniture after he (a) was requested to store the redwoods for another person, (b) borrowed the redwoods from another person, or (c) found the redwoods lost by another person. Participants were then asked to decide whether the original possessor or the modifier of the transferred objects was the owner, and to explain their answers. The results showed that most subjects were inclined to select the laborer as owner in the losing context, and support the original possessor as owner in the storing context. Participants were more likely to justify their answers with the first possession heuristic in the storing context, but more likely to justify their answers with transfer types in the borrowing context and justify their answers with knowledge and intention in the losing context. The study shows that transfer types affect use of the labor rule in adults' ownership judgments, and may shed light on legislation and court decisions in real life.

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We investigated relationship between Chinese children's imaginary companions (ICs) and their understanding of second‐order false beliefs and emotions in 180 children, aged 5–6 years old. We examined the potential differences in second‐order false belief understanding and emotion understanding between children with and without ICs, children with egalitarian IC relationships and hierarchical IC relationships, as well as children with invisible friends and personified objects. The results revealed that children with ICs had better second‐order false belief understanding and emotion understanding than children without ICs. Compared with children with hierarchical relationships, children with egalitarian relationships had better second‐order false belief understanding. However, children with invisible friends and personified objects did not differ on their understanding of second‐order false beliefs and emotions. The results suggest that compared with IC types, IC status and child‐IC relationship qualities may be more relevant to children's theory of mind. It will be interesting for the future researchers to investigate the underlying mechanism of the differences between children with egalitarian IC relationships and hierarchical IC relationships.

Rhythmic activities such as joint music-making and synchronous moving are known to produce prosocial effects in both adults and children, but the underlying mechanism remains unclear. One possible mechanism is that the time-locked, fine-grained coordination characteristic of rhythmic activities plays a key role in producing powerful prosocial effects. The present study investigated how coordination in a joint music-making task would influence kindergarteners' prosociality toward both coperformers and unaffiliated strangers. The study involved 138 Chinese children (72 girls, M = 5 years and 6 months, range = 5.0 to 6.0 years) from urban middle-class families. Participants were paired and instructed to play percussion instruments in alternation accompanying a song. In the fine-grained coordination condition, the dyad alternated every measure, resulting in a moment-to-moment coordinative experience; in the coarse-grained coordination condition where the coordination was sparser, the dyad alternated every eight measures. Children in the fine-grained coordination condition were subsequently more willing to help their partner complete a block-assembly task and more generous in sharing stickers with unknown children in a dictator game, compared with children in the coarse-grained coordination condition. These findings demonstrate that fine-grained coordination in rhythmic activities increases prosociality above and beyond having a shared goal of coperforming, supporting that coordination is an integral part of the prosocial mechanism. The prosocial effects of joint rhythmic activities generalized beyond the coperformers to anonymous strangers, indicating that the role of coordination may change from directing specific bonding in infancy to encouraging general prosociality from early childhood and onward.