Fascinating Findings

As we start a study looking at how anxiety relates to children’s ability to understand another person’s point of view, we reviewed Caputi and Bosacki’s (2022) work examining the relationship between anxiety, perspective-taking, and well-being in children aged 11–12.

What did the study entail?

Children read five short stories involving different types of non-literal speech (such as persuasion, misunderstanding, white lies, sarcasm, and conflicting emotions) and were then asked to explain the meaning of a character’s sentence.

What did they find?

These researchers found that girls who were better at understanding other people’s perspectives also reported feeling more anxious, and this related to lower life satisfaction. These patterns were not found among boys. These results are interesting because they suggest that while being good at perspective-taking is an important social skill in child development (found by many studies), it may also come with emotional challenges, particularly for girls as they transition from childhood to adolescence.

Links to CDL research 

We chose to highlight this study because it relates to a current honours project exploring how shyness and anxiety are connected to children’s ability to understand another person’s point of view during a communicative task.

Reference

Caputi, M., & Bosacki, S. (2022). The role of gender in the relation among anxiety, theory of mind, and well-being in early adolescents. The Journal of Early Adolescence, 43(7), 845–866. https://doi.org/10.1177/02724316221130440

As we are looking at how children’s shyness impacts how they communicate with their peers, we reviewed Poole and colleagues’ (2025) work examining the progression of children’s sharing across repeated social interactions, with a key focus on shyness. This study examines the progression of children’s sharing across repeated social interactions. It is relevant for understanding how social behaviours develop and change with familiarity, and how children’s shyness impacts these behaviours.

What did they look at?

In this study, children were given tickets that could be shared with their partner during a game. When children repeatedly interacted with the same partner, they increased their sharing. However, children higher in shyness and children who perceived their partner to be shyer shared more across interactions. Thus, as shy children become more familiar with their peers, they develop stronger connections which may mitigate some of the negative impacts of shyness for social functioning.

Links to CDL research

We chose to highlight this study as it relates to a current honour’s project involving a collaboration with the Social Development Lab investigating how temperamental shyness relates to children’s communication. While Poole and colleagues focused on sharing behaviours, their work gives valuable insight into the interactive patterns of shy children, thereby providing key background knowledge for the current project.

Reference

Poole, K. L., English, S. D., Sosa-Hernandez, L., Dockrill, M., & Henderson, H. A. (2025). Children’s sharing behavior with an unfamiliar peer across repeated social interactions. Developmental Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0001938

As we are looking at how children navigate competitive environments, we reviewed Harlow and colleagues (2022) work examining the impact of sports participation on child development. 

What did they look at?

This Canadian qualitative study explores parents', coaches, and childrens' (aged 3-5) perceptions of the impact of sports participation on preschoolers' physical and social development. Findings suggest that early participation in sports may provide benefits in physical literacy skills, social skills, and understanding of success and failure. However, positive benefits were not universally present just from participation, and depended on unique interacting contextual factors. 

Links to CDL research 

We are currently analysing data from a study looking at how competitive environments, and in particular, the experience of winning or losing influences children’s social behaviour and performance, and whether children’s socio cognitive skills relate to their reactions.

Reference

Harlow, M. V., Bassett-Gunter, R., & FraserThomas, J. (2022). Exploring parents’ , coaches’ , and children’s experiences and perceived outcomes in preschooler sport. Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health, 14(4), 668-685.