The effect of pretend play on 150 (~ 75 girls; 75 boys; M=3 yro) preschool children's social cognition will be assessed through a semester long intervention study. Research has reported a trend of female superiority in empathy and ToM and a likelihood of young girls to engage in pretend play more frequently and to a higher degree than young boys. Previous research has also found a relationship ...

The problem of toy expertise is that a cultural object comes with no “instruction manual”. goal the article to reveal both potential and limitations cultural-historical psychology activity theory as conceptual framework for doll test form pretend play criterion its developmental function using example Barbie Monster High dolls. proves necessity psychological analysis assess doll. work demonstra...

We assessed whether different processes might be at play during pretence understanding by examining breakdowns of performance in participants with acquired brain damage. In Experiment 1 patients with frontal or parietal lesions and neurologically intact adults were asked to categorize videos of pretend and real actions. In Experiment 2 participants saw three types of videos: real intentional ac...

This thesis is part of the Aurora project, an ongoing long-term project investigating the potential use of robots to help children with autism overcome some of their impairments in social interaction, communication and imagination. Autism is a spectrum disorder and children with autism have different abilities and needs. Related research has shown that robots can play the role of a mediator for...

Systematic studies of infants with autism have not been previously carried out. Taking advantage of a new prospective screening instrument for autism in infancy (S. Baron-Cohen et al., 1996), the present study found that, compared with developmentally delayed and normally developing children, 20-month-old children with autism were specifically impaired on some aspects of empathy, joint attentio...