Cognitive and behavioural predictors of adolescents' communicative perspective‐taking and social relationships

Abstract

Given the pivotal role that social interactions play for adolescents' well-being, understanding the factors that influence communication is key. The present study examined relations between adolescents' communicative perspective-taking, executive function skills, and ADHD traits and explored the role communicative perspective-taking plays in peer relations. Data was collected from a community sample of 15 to 19-years-olds (N=46) in Waterloo, Canada. Two communicative perspective-taking tasks required participants to infer speakers' communicative intentions. A battery of tasks assessed adolescents' working memory and inhibitory control.Elevated ADHD traits were associated with weaker working memory, inhibitory control, and communicative perspective-taking. Working memory was the strongest predictor of communicative perspective-taking. Highlighting the importance of communicative perspectivetaking for social interactions, adolescents with weaker skills in this area reported worse peer relations. Findings underscore the importance of communicative perspective-taking for adolescents' social relations and have relevance for understanding the social difficulties faced by adolescents with elevated ADHD traits.

Translation and validation of the Mind-Wandering Test for Spanish adolescents

“…Although these variables have clearly different characteristics, it is generally considered that their respective overall values are equally good indicators of subjective well-being. However, the observed correlations have not been high enough to be able to state that they measure identical constructs (Banati and Diers, 2016;Casas, Baltatescu, Bertrán, González, and Hatos, 2013;Diener, et al 1999;Nilsen and Bacso, 2017). The scores obtained with the MWQ would indicate that somehow this new construct could form part of subjective well-being.…”

Individual differences in the production of referential expressions: The effect of language proficiency, language exposure and executive function in bilingual and monolingual children

“…WM refers to the ability to store and manipulate information, and it has been connected to perspective-taking and referential choice in at least two ways. Firstly, it underpins the storage and updating of the interlocutor's perspective and the comparison of that perspective with one's own to check for convergence (Nilsen & Bacso, 2017; Wardlow, 2013). Secondly, it may be implicated in the use of feedback in the case in which one of the interlocutors explicitly signals a mismatch between their perspective and that of their conversational partner.…”

Preschoolers Flexibly Shift Between Speakers' Perspectives During Real‐Time Language Comprehension

“…For example, Nilsen and Graham () found that children with better inhibitory control were less egocentric in communicative perspective taking, yet they found no link between communicative perspective taking and working memory or cognitive flexibility. In contrast, Nilsen and Bacso () found that working memory strongly predicted adolescents’ communicative perspective taking (see Schuh et al, for similar findings).…”