ABSTRACT
Despite remarkable achievements in children’s understanding of their own and others’ minds by the age of five years, there is still much more to learn to be a competent mindreader and perspective-taker. Indeed, children exhibit some intriguing setbacks along this developmental path, and even adults commit mindreading errors. This chapter focuses on age-related changes and individual differences in advanced theory of mind from middle childhood to adulthood. Drawing primarily from our research, we review children’s and adults’ causal reasoning about the impact of people’s life events on their current and future mental states (e.g., how do past experiences bias future-oriented thoughts and emotions?), their awareness of mental diversity and common ground (e.g., when will individuals experience varying thoughts in the same situation and when will they think more alike?), and their beliefs about connections between different kinds of mental states (e.g., how do thoughts influence emotions?). We conclude with suggestions for future research to innovate new areas of inquiry in advanced theory of mind.
