The relationship between children's executive functioning, theory of mind, and verbal skills with their own and others' behaviour in a cooperative context: Changes in relations from early to middle school‐age

Abstract

Learning to behave in socially competent ways is an essential component of children's development. This study examined the relations between children's social, communicative, and cognitive skills and their behaviours during a cooperative task, as well as how these relationships change at different ages. Early school‐age (5–8 years old) and middle school‐age (9–12 years old) children completed tasks to assess their executive functioning (i.e., inhibitory control, working memory, and planning), theory of mind, and verbal skills and participated in an interactive cooperative task. Because children participated in pairs, dyadic data analysis was used to examine the effect of individual characteristics on children's own and their partners' social behaviour. Results indicated that better theory of mind was related to lower levels of the competitive behaviours demonstrated by younger children, as well as by partners. In contrast, for older children, planning and verbal skills related to lower levels of competitive behaviour. The associations of theory of mind and planning skills with behaviour were significantly different between the early and middle school‐age groups. Findings suggest that children may utilize different skills at various developmental stages to guide their social behaviours. Findings have implications for theories of children's social development, as well as for interventions aimed at enhancing social skills. Highlights Children's theory of mind, executive functioning, and verbal skills were assessed in relation to their own and a peer's social behaviour Dyadic analyses were used to examine children's cooperative and competitive behaviour during an interactive task with a peer Findings reveal that the impact specific skills have on their own and a peer's behaviour depends on developmental stage

Children's sharing with collaborators versus competitors: The impact of theory of mind and executive functioning

“…show more collaborative behaviours (Huyder & Nilsen, 2012;Huyder et al, 2017). In contrast, within a competitive context, children with better EF may be better able to play a competitive game in a way that is in keeping with rules of equality (i.e., understanding that to win fairly, games involve players starting at the same place).…”

“…In sum, children modify their social behaviour according to situational context (i.e., cooperative versus competitive; e.g., Huyder, Nilsen, & Bacso, 2017), however, the impact that such contextual factors have on children's resource sharing has not been directly examined.…”

“…It was expected that children with better socio-cognitive and cognitive skills would show sharing behaviour that was close to equity. However, as past work has found differing relations between (socio)cognitive skills and social behaviour (Huyder et al, 2017;Im-Bolter, Agostino, & Owens-Jaffray, 2016), it was anticipated that age may moderate the relations between children's (socio)cognitive skills and their sharing.…”

“…It could also be that children are utilizing different skills at different developmental periods (potentially due to the different rate by which cognitive skills develop; Best, Miller, & Jones, 2009). For instance, different relations have been found between children's planning skills and their behaviour during a collaborative task for 5-to 8-year-olds versus 9-to 12-year-olds (Huyder et al, 2017). Together with the current study, these findings suggest that when speaking to the importance of underlying skills for social behaviour, the developmental stage needs to be considered.…”

Social Information Processing in Preschool Children: Relations to Social Interaction

“…In the studies conducted, children in the age group 5-6 share socially, understand that their peers need to show positive social behavior by engaging in collaborative social interaction in order to successfully complete a job / study, and exhibit positive social behavior (Schmidt et al, 2016) and it was concluded that they shaped their behavior by interpreting their peers' views (Sher et al, 2014). However, it is seen that children's collaborative behaviors are an important determinant of their social interactions and there is a relationship between the collaborative social interaction they show with their peers and determining their social behavior (Atabey, 2018;Huyder & Nilsen, 2012;Huyder, Nilsen, & Bacso, 2017). It can be said that the studies conducted support the result obtained from th current study.…”