ABSTRACT
This chapter describes a longitudinal study that was carried out to examine relationships among different aspects of young children's cognitive development, which seem theoretically connected but typically have been studied in isolation. In the early 1980s, a number of studies focused on young children's knowledge about the mental world, better known as theory of mind (ToM) research. Wellman and coworkers conceptualized young children's developing metacognitive knowledge and their understanding of mental verbs as the development of a ToM. Knowing about declarative knowledge was labeled metacognitive knowing, whereas knowing about procedural knowledge was addressed as metastrategic knowing. The main goal of longitudinal study was to assess all theoretically relevant variables simultaneously and to analyze the interrelationships of constructs over time. Subsequent ToM research has addressed young children's understanding of mental states, such as desires, intentions, emotions, attention, consciousness, and so on.
