ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the developing awareness of such skills in children of school age. It covers research on children's perceptions of others social perception and attribution. It coincided with a growing interest on the part of social psychologists in social cognition, and, primarily, the issue of how people took in information about other people and how they processed this information to make judgements about others. The main assumption underlying most work in social cognition is that children's cognitive skills can be used to explain their social competence. Selman has applied his theoretical framework to children's understanding of authority, as well as using it more generally as a description of children's social cognition. Understanding of rules is particularly significant in the field of social cognition, because it is one of the few social topics investigated by Piaget. Despite these cautions, social cognition plays an important part in understanding children's social behaviour.
