This 5-year longitudinal study investigated advanced theory-of-mind (AToM) development in 161 German 5- to 10-year-olds (89 females, 72 males). Core aspects of AToM developed nonlinearly, with children reaching a milestone at the age of 7 years, around when they attained the conceptual insight that mental states can be recursive. In late elementary school, a multicomponent battery was used. Performance on many aspects of AToM was predicted by information-processing skills (intelligence and language at 6 years), but not by the age when children acquired the basic conceptual insight; only some naturalistic, social-interpretative tasks were correlated with children’s age at acquisition. This study documents significant developmental progressions in middle-childhood AToM and suggests that different mechanisms may underlie diverse aspects of social cognition.

中文翻译：

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儿童中期高级心理理论的发展：一项从 5 岁到 10 岁的纵向研究

这项为期 5 年的纵向研究调查了 161 名德国 5 至 10 岁儿童（89 名女性，72 名男性）的高级心理理论 (AToM) 发展。AToM 的核心方面是非线性发展的，儿童在 7 岁时达到一个里程碑，大约在他们获得心理状态可以递归的概念洞察力时。在小学后期，使用了多组分电池。AToM 的许多方面的表现是由信息处理技能（6 岁时的智力和语言）预测的，而不是由儿童获得基本概念洞察力的年龄预测的；只有一些自然的、社会解释的任务与儿童的习得年龄相关。