ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a selective overview of developmental research regarding social cognition, social competence, and the link between social cognition and social competence. Children at the age of nine are able to infer the thoughts and knowledge of another person which differ from those held by the children themselves. Investigations of children’s conceptions of interpersonal relations have focused primarily on describing age-related changes in children’s views of authority/leadership and friendship. Social cognition is a multidimensional construct, and several particular dimensions of this construct have been investigated from a developmental perspective. Investigations of children’s conceptions of interpersonal relations have focused primarily on describing age-related changes in children’s views of authority/leadership and friendship. The social rules studied regard conventions regarding forms of address, mode of dress, cross gender behavior, sex-typed occupations, patterns of family living in different cultures, and mode of eating. Identifying social cognitive correlates of social status has been approached from complementary quantitative and qualitative strategies.
