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Record W4407350378 · doi:10.1007/s12144-025-07475-x

Mentalization, theory of mind and socioemotional development in middle childhood

2025· article· en· W4407350378 on OpenAlexaff
Francesca Locati, Conte Federica, Karin Ensink, Midgley Nick, Parolin Laura

Bibliographic record

VenueCurrent Psychology · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldPsychology
TopicChild and Animal Learning Development
Canadian institutionsUniversité Laval
FundersUniversità degli Studi di Pavia
KeywordsSocioemotional selectivity theoryPsychologyMentalizationTheory of mindFalse beliefDevelopmental psychologyChildhood developmentCognitive psychologyCognitionNeuroscience

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Abstract Theory of Mind (ToM) and Mentalization are essential domains involved in child socioemotional development. ToM is the ability to understand people’s actions and interactions as guided by internal beliefs, emotions, desires, and intentions. In contrast, mentalization is a mental process involved in interpreting human behaviour in terms of mental states related to the self and others. ToM and mentalization constructs are frequently used interchangeably, although they play distinct roles in child development. The present study explores this issue, focusing on the mentalization and ToM interactive dynamics in relation to middle childhood socioemotional skills. Participants were 112 non-clinical children from 8 to 10 y.o. assessed with Child Reflective Functioning Scale (CRFS) on Child Attachment Interview, Reading the Mind in the Eyes test and the Roberts-2 Test. Results from network analysis revealed an association between ToM and Mentalization. Mentalization is positively connected with self-help abilities and age. ToM supports mentalization, while mentalization is related to developing a sense of self-agency involved in improving psychological resources and preventing mental health impairment.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame distilled prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.000
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.000
Version: codex-gemma-dda1882f352aValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesInsufficient payload (model declined to judge)
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Observational · Consensus signal: none
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.542
Threshold uncertainty score1.000

Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0000.000
Science and technology studies0.0000.000
Scholarly communication0.0000.000
Open science0.0000.000
Research integrity0.0000.000
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0010.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.039
GPT teacher head0.352
Teacher spread0.313 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.

Study designObservational
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations5
Published2025
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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