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Abstract

A number of cognitive and social cognitive tests were administered to sixth grade students as part of a larger study of early adolescent development. Relationships between logico-mathematical cognitive ability and the social abilities of person-perception and perspective-taking were examined. Subjects were asked to describe themselves as they would imagine their mother, their father, and their best friend would. No significant correlation was found between the psychological depth of the descriptions and performance on a Piagetian-type formal operations task. A significant correlation was found between degree of differentiation among the descriptions and performance on the formal operations task. The psychological depth and degree of differentiation scales were also highly correlated. No sex differences were found in social cognitive abilities. These findings do not support a notion of across-domain invariance in cognitive development, but do suggest that some aspects of perspective-taking ability extend across physical, logico-mathematical, and social cognitive boundaries.

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Cognitive Development and the Ability to Infer Others' Perceptions of Self

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