Encyclopedia on Early Childhood Development 1 ©2010 Centre of Excellence for Early Childhood Development Hughes C, Lecce S Early Social Cognition CLAIRE HUGHES 1 , PhD SERENA LECCE 2 , PhD 1 University of Cambridge, UNITED KINGDOM 2 University of Pavia, ITALY (Published online August 5, 2010) Topic Social cognition Introduction Most definitions of social cognition in early childhood center on children’s awareness of their own and others’ thoughts, feelings, beliefs and intentions (aka “theory of mind”) but from a policy angle at least, both competence and performance perspectives are important. Thus, while some interventions improve children’s social understanding, others focus on applying this understanding to promote relationship skills (e.g., via good emotion regulation or positive strategies for avoiding or resolving conflict). Subject Social cognition has broad clinical and educational relevance. Although early work suggested that deficits were restricted to children with autism, 1 impairments have since been identified in several groups of children, including those with specific language impairment 2 or conduct disorder, 3 or late-signing deaf children. 4 More broadly, programmes to promote social and emotional learning are available across the globe, often supported by the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL). 5 Problems For the policymaker, key issues in this field concern the importance of: (i) charting key developmental milestones in social cognition; (ii) identifying outcomes associated with individual differences in social cognition; (iii) elucidating the origins of these individual differences; (iv) devising multi-pronged interventions for schools, families and communities. Research Context Early studies of social cognition relied on children’s responses to forced-choice questions about story characters (e.g., does he feel happy or sad). More recent research involves an array of methods that include asking open-ended questions (e.g., why does he feel that way?), direct observations (e.g., play between friends or siblings, or parent-child shared