Social cognitive abilities – notably, Theory of Mind (ToM) and social information processing (SIP) – are key skills for the development of social competence and adjustment. By understanding affective and cognitive mental states and processing social information correctly, children will be able to enact prosocial behaviors, to interact with peers and adults adaptively, and to be socially included. As social adjustment and inclusion are major issues for children with intellectual disabilities (IDs), the present study aimed to explore their social cognitive profile by combining cluster analysis of both ToM and SIP competence, and to investigate the structure of relations between these skills in children with IDs. Seventy-eight elementary school children with non-specific IDs were recruited. They had a chronological age ranging from 4 years and 8 months to 12 years and 6 months and presented a preschool developmental age. Performance-based measures were administered to assess ToM and SIP abilities. Questionnaires were completed by the children’s parents to evaluate the children’s social competence and adjustment and their risk of developing externalizing or internalizing behaviors. Exploratory analysis highlighted strengths and weaknesses in the social cognitive profiles of these children with IDs. It also emphasized that the understanding of affective and cognitive mental states was used differently when facing appropriate vs. inappropriate social behaviors. The present study leads to a better understanding of the socio-emotional profile of children with IDs and offers some suggestions on how to implement effective interventions.

This paper investigates how parents of children with intellectual disabilities (IDs) socialize emotions, and how these behaviors affect their children's social adjustment. The goals were: 1) to identify the emotion-related socialization behaviors (ERSBs) used by parents of children with IDs, in comparison to parents of typically developing (TD) children, and 2) to examine the extent to which these reactions and conversations affect children's social competences and (mal)adjustment. Parents' reactions to emotions have been described as either supportive or unsupportive of children's socio-Emotional development, and their conversations about emotions with their children have also been considered as helpful in this respect. However, little is known about these reactions and conservations in either mothers or fathers of children with IDs. The first study compared these ERSBs in 54 mothers and 32 fathers of children of preschool developmental age with or without IDs. The results showed that parents of children with IDs use more unsupportive reactions to their emotions. The second study investigated the links between parents' reactions and conversations, and their children's profiles (IDs, developmental age, social adjustment and externalizing or internalizing problems). Correlational and regression analyses emphasized specific links between some maternal or paternal reactions and conversations on the one hand and children's characteristics, social adjustment or behavior problems on the other hand.

Preschoolers face new challenges in their social life: the development of social and emotional abilities in order to have positive relationships with peers and adults. Empathy, the ability to share and understand the emotions of others, contributes to this socio-emotional adjustment. This exploratory study examines mothers and fathers' perceptions of their child's empathy and individual factors, such as age, gender, and personality, which are related to cognitive and affective empathy in 63 typically developing preschoolers. Links between children's individual characteristics (empathy and personality) and their social adjustment on the one hand and risk of developing internalized vs. externalized behaviors on the other were also investigated. Parents completed four questionnaires about their child's empathy, personality, and social (mal)adjustment. The results showed that mothers and fathers perceived their children's cognitive and affective empathy, attention to others' feelings, and social actions (such as helping), in the same way, except for emotion contagion. Gender differences appeared specifically for some components of empathy: girls were said to pay more attention to others' emotions while boys had better cognitive empathy. Moreover, children's empathy as perceived by mothers or fathers was positively linked with their age, and with personality factors (extraversion, emotional stability, agreeableness, and openness to experience). Cognitive empathy and personality were found to be partly related to higher social skills and lower externalized and internalized behaviors. The results nuanced specific links between cognitive and affective empathy and social adjustment as well as behavior problems at preschool age. These results may have some implications for future research and prevention in childhood.

Improving our understanding of contribution of environmental factors to Theory of Mind (ToM) and Emotion Regulation (ER) competences in children with intellectual disabilities (IDs) is crucial to helping them to boost their emotional and social abilities. Parental emotion-related socialization behaviors (ERSBs) have been shown to be favorable factors for the development of these competences in preschoolers. However, few studies have investigated links between mothers' and fathers' ERSBs and socio-emotional abilities in children with IDs. The goal of this study is to explore the share of the variance in ToM and ER abilities explained by individual characteristic and each parent's reactions to the emotions of their children with IDs and emotion-related conversation. Twenty-seven mothers, 16 fathers, and their children with IDs participated. Direct and indirect measures of children's ToM were used. Questionnaires about children's ER competences and parents' ERSBs were completed by parents. The results demonstrated that, at preschool developmental age, parents' ERSBs had an impact on affective and cognitive ToM as well as on ER, depending on the parent's gender, on children's chronological and developmental age, and on the nature of ERSBs, namely reactions or conversations.

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