The mapping of developmental relations between social cognition and real‐world social behaviors has theoretical and practical importance. In the domain of social anxiety, however, studies examining links between social cognitive ability and anxiety have produced mixed results. One potential explanation is that varied facets of social cognition are differentially linked to social anxiety across development. To better understand how social cognition relates to social anxiety, we assessed multiple facets of two important social cognitive capacities—mind‐mindedness and theory of mind— in school‐aged children aged 7–12 and young adults aged 18–24. We also measured social anxiety traits. We found that, across ages, mind‐mindedness and theory of mind were not related to each other. Additionally, for children and adults, higher levels of social anxiety correlated with higher levels of mind‐mindedness toward close social partners, indicating an increased propensity to describe partners using mental state terms. By contrast, social anxiety was not correlated with theory of mind, which measured the ability to decipher or attribute mental states to photographs, videos, or story characters. These findings offer insight into how different components of social cognition are related and how more naturalistic measures of social cognition involving relationships may relate to social anxiety across development.

中文翻译：

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关于您的想法：童年和成年期的思维，心理理论与社交焦虑特质之间的关系

社会认知与现实社会行为之间发展关系的映射具有理论和实践意义。然而，在社交焦虑领域，研究社交认知能力与焦虑之间联系的研究产生了不同的结果。一种可能的解释是，社会认知的各个方面与整个发展过程中的社会焦虑有不同的联系。为了更好地理解社交认知与社交焦虑之间的关系，我们评估了7-12岁的学龄儿童和18-24岁的年轻成年人的两种重要的社会认知能力-思想和心理理论。我们还测量了社交焦虑特质。我们发现，在各个年龄段中，思想观念和心理理论是互不相关的。此外，对于儿童和成人，较高的社交焦虑水平与对亲密社交伙伴的较高思想意识相关，这表明使用心理状态术语描述伴侣的倾向增加。相比之下，社交焦虑与心理理论无关，后者衡量了将精神状态解读或归因于照片，视频或故事人物的能力。这些发现提供了对社会认知的不同组成部分之间如何关联以及涉及关系的更自然主义的社会认知测度如何与整个发展过程中的社会焦虑相关的见解。衡量了将精神状态解读或归因于照片，视频或故事人物的能力。这些发现提供了对社会认知的不同组成部分之间如何关联以及涉及关系的更自然主义的社会认知测度如何与整个发展过程中的社会焦虑相关的见解。衡量了将精神状态解读或归因于照片，视频或故事人物的能力。这些发现提供了对社会认知的不同组成部分之间如何关联以及涉及关系的更自然主义的社会认知测度如何与整个发展过程中的社会焦虑相关的见解。