Ted Ruffman
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 219196 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Ted Ruffman |
| PRENOMES | Ted |
| SOBRENOME | Ruffman |
| ASSINATURA | RUFFMAN T |
| AFILIAÇÕES | University of Otago |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8790-6451 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 43 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 123 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 43 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 1989 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 6 |
How social media use and abuse are related to social cognition and loneliness in older adults
Social media (SM) offers older adults new avenues for social interaction, yet its relations to social cognition remain unclear given its fundamental differences from face-to-face communication. This study examined how SM use and abuse relate to social cognition, cognitive functioning, and loneliness in older adults. A total of 529 participants aged 60–89 completed online measures of social cognition, cognitive functioning, loneliness, and social …
What she believes or what she says? The relation between maternal social dominance orientation, right-wing authoritarianism, mental state talk, and children’s theory of mind
The present study provided a novel examination of how children’s theory of mind (ToM) might be related to two maternal beliefs: (1) social dominance orientation (SDO: the belief that inequalities in society are justified) and (2) right-wing authoritarianism (RWA: a belief in following established authorities). We reasoned that these beliefs could affect maternal talk in that mothers with high SDO and RWA would be less likely to use mental state (…
A Review and Critique of Studies Examining Empathy in Infants
We review studies examining empathy (empathic concern) in infants and children. The traditional claim is that empathy developed over the second year of life such that by 18–24 months, children were often showing signs of empathy and that empathy is enabled by children’s developing sense of self. However, over the past 25 years, researchers have often concluded that infants under 1 year of age are empathic and that signs of self-understanding are …
The role of parent talk in connected and unconnected conversations on children’s theory-of-mind development
Previous studies have consistently found a positive relationship between parental mental state talk (MST) about desires, emotions, and cognitions as crucial for children's subsequent theory-of-mind development. The present study examined whether connected conversations between the parent and child yielded more parental MST. We employed a within-subjects longitudinal design, testing 48 parents and their children (18- to 26-month-olds) in a series …
The importance of relationship history on parents’ scaffolding of children’s mental states
Parent mental state talk (MST) is an important contributor for children's theory-of-mind development, with cognitive MST for Western children being more advanced, often being used with older children relative to talk about desires or emotions. We investigated the contexts in which cognitive MST is most prevalent, as well as the conditions that prompted mothers to provide scaffolding of MST with toddlers. We tested 89 mother-toddler dyads, examini…
Information Regarding Shared Genes Between Humans Improves Attitudes Towards World Members
Laypeople reason that different races share 68% of their genes. In fact, the Human Genome Project indicates that humans, regardless of race, share 99.9% of our genetic material and that only 1/200th of 1% has been used to group people into the five classically conceived races. We reasoned that information about shared genetics might compel participants to extend their ingroup to include those formerly in the outgroup. In three studies, we showed …
A meta-analytic review on the social–emotional intelligence correlates of the six bullying roles
The Capricious Nature of Theory of Mind
Using a between-groups design and random assignment, this study examined 214 Turkish children's (M = 11.66 years) mindreading and general reasoning about in-group members (Turks), similar out-group members (Syrians within Turkey) and dissimilar out-group members (Northern Europeans). Children heard four mindreading and four general reasoning stories with in-group or out-group members as targets. Whereas children's general reasoning about three gr…
Toddlers’ Self-Recognition and Progression From Goal- to Emotion-Based Helping
Research has typically used cross-sectional designs to draw conclusions on the development of helping. This study aimed to examine the development of instrumental and empathic helping behaviors as they emerge, and assess how self-recognition might moderate this progression. Seventy-two children (14- to 25-months at T1) were assessed over four monthly sessions. Participants’ individual response patterns showed instrumental helping to be a necessar…
Use of a head camera to examine maternal input and its relation to 10- to 26-month-olds’ acquisition of mental and non-mental state vocabulary
We examined the relation between maternal responsiveness and children's acquisition of mental and non-mental state vocabulary in 59 pairs of mothers and children aged 10 to 26 months as they engaged in a free-play episode. Children wore a head camera and responsiveness was defined as maternal talk that commented on the child's actions (e.g., when the child reached for or manipulated an object visible in the head camera). As hypothesized, maternal…
RWAc and SDOc
Right‐wing authoritarianism (RWA) and social dominance orientation (SDO) predict prejudice and discrimination in adults. To create analogous scales for children, we carried out four studies. First, we gave 112 adults from New Zealand (Study 1) and 146 adults from Turkey (Study 2) novel child‐appropriate measures of RWA and SDO, along with the standard adult measures. The two RWA measures correlated more highly with each other than with the SDO me…
In Two Minds
We examined Turkish participants' mindreading accuracy toward ingroup versus outgroup targets. Three hundred and fifty-four Turkish participants were randomly assigned to one of three target groups: Turkish, Syrian, or Norwegian. The mindreading accuracy for these targets was measured along with the perceived cultural similarity of the target to the ingroup, as well as prejudice and threat perception. Participants evidenced higher mindreading acc…
Minding the children
Mothers’ use of mental state talk (MST) is linked to young children’s performance on false belief tests of theory of mind (ToM) and to their behaviour in social contexts. However, little is known about MST beyond the early years. This investigation is the first to examine continuity in both mother and child MST from preschool (age 3–4 years) to middle childhood (age 10) and examines the role of early maternal MST in children’s later ToM and use o…
Effects of Age on Emotion Regulation, Emotional Empathy, and Prosocial Behavior
These findings contribute to clarification of mixed previous evidence regarding the experience of emotional empathy in young versus older adulthood. We discuss the importance of considering additional subcomponents of empathy such as emotion regulation, while also accounting for the relevance of the empathy induction to each age group
Variety in parental use of “want” relates to subsequent growth in children’s theory of mind
In 2 cross-lagged, longitudinal studies we contrasted parental talk about want in a single context versus multiple contexts. Study 1 examined thirty-two 2 year olds, with mothers describing pictures to children. Mothers could use want in zero, one, or multiple contexts. Children whose mothers used want in multiple contexts experienced a significantly larger gain in mental state terms over a 6-month period. Study 2 examined 50 preschoolers, measur…
Executive function and theory of mind as predictors of socially withdrawn behavior in institutionalized children
False‐belief understanding and executive functions are two main sociocognitive abilities reliably linked to child social competence. Although institution‐reared children are especially at risk for behavioral problems and cognitive delays, the role that executive function and false‐belief understanding might play in the social withdrawal of institutionalized children has not been examined. The current study used two‐wave data to investigate the co…
Subjective belonging and in-group favoritism
Theory of mind and prosocial behavior in childhood
It has been argued that children who possess an advanced theory of mind (ToM) are more likely to act prosocially, yet the empirical findings are mixed. To address this issue definitively, a meta-analytic integration of all prior literature that met appropriate inclusion criteria was conducted. In total, 76 studies including 6,432 children between 2 and 12 years of age contributed to these analyses. Collapsed across all studies, a significant asso…
Age-Related Preservation of Trust Following Minor Transgressions
The findings show that there are no age-related differences in the way that obvious cheating in disguise is punished with reduced trustworthiness ratings. However, older adults are less vigilant to more subtle cheating in disguise, or are more forgiving of transgressions perceived as minor
Age differences in right-wing authoritarianism and their relation to emotion recognition
This study examined the correlates of right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) in older adults. Participants were given tasks measuring emotion recognition, executive functions and fluid IQ and questionnaires measuring RWA, perceived threat and social dominance orientation. Study 1 established higher age-related RWA across the age span in more than 2,600 New Zealanders. Studies 2 to 4 found that threat, education, social dominance and age all predicted …
What’s good for the goose is not good for the gander
The findings are discussed in relation to a growing body of research suggesting both age and gender differences in response to emotional stimuli and the differential efficacy of mouth and eyes looking for men and women
Face Age and Eye Gaze Influence Older Adults’ Emotion Recognition
The current study highlights the impact of stimulus face age and gaze direction on emotion recognition in young and older adults. The use of young face stimuli with direct gaze in most research might contribute to age-related emotion recognition differences
To belief or not belief
Examining the time course of young and older adults’ mimicry of enjoyment and nonenjoyment smiles
Electromyographic (EMG) research suggests that implicit mimicry of happy facial expressions remains intact with age. However, age-related differences in EMG responses to enjoyment and nonenjoyment smiles have not been explored. The present study assessed younger and older adults' orbicularis oculi (O.oculi; eye) and zygomaticus major (Z.major; cheek) reactions to images of individuals displaying enjoyment and nonenjoyment smiles. Both age groups …
Age-Related Differences in Social Economic Decision Making
These findings are discussed in the context of evidence for improved anger regulation and increased prosocial behavior with age
Older (but not younger) siblings facilitate false belief understanding
Results from 4 experiments and an analysis in which all data from 444 English and Japanese children are pooled show (a) a linear increase in understanding false belief with the number of older siblings, (b) no such effect for children younger than 3 years 2 months, (c) no helpful effect of younger siblings at any age (despite the large sample), (d) no effect of siblings' gender, and (e) no helpful effect of siblings on a task measuring children's…
How Parenting Style Affects False Belief Understanding
This study investigated whether mothers facilitate false belief understanding, and if so, what strategies are particularly relevant. The mothers of 64 3‐ and 4‐year‐olds were given questionnaires eliciting information about mother's education, mother's occupation, number of younger and older siblings, the time the child spends with mother, and about how mothers deal with five disciplinary situations with their child. Three variables were positive…
Why do infants make A not B errors in a search task, yet show memory for the location of hidden objects in a nonsearch task
In 4 experiments, infants aged 8 to 12 months were tested on A not B search tasks, and nonsearch A not B tasks following the violation-of-expectation paradigm. A 1-location task and 2 control tasks were also conducted. In the nonsearch tasks, a toy was hidden in A, moved to B, and retrieved after a delay from either A (impossible) or B (possible). Results showed significantly longer looking times at impossible events, indicating some memory for w…
The ABCs of deception
Most research suggests that it is not until age 4 that children understand deception as a means of creating a false belief. Yet children could have failed on these tasks because of either (a) conceptual problems (an inability to understand that deception is a means of creating a false belief), or (b) pragmatic problems (an inability to articulate an understanding of false belief) and task complexity (an inability to follow the narrative or make a…
Subjective belonging and in-group favoritism
Is there a Gender Difference in False Belief Development
The contribution of children's social environment to their acquisition of theory of mind skills, combined with the well documented advantage for girls in mental state talk with siblings, peers and mothers, might lead to a female advantage on false belief tasks. We present a post‐hoc analysis of large datasets from two independent laboratories. A slight advantage for girls on false belief task performance was found in both datasets and was only ap…
The belief-based emotion of suprise
Three experiments were carried out to determine whether there is a lag in predicting surprise relative to false belief. All 3 experiments used backwards reasoning tasks. The findings were that ( a ) there is a lag in predicting surprise relative to false belief, ( b ) by 5 or 6 years of age children claim that one will be surprised when they gain knowledge of that which they were previously ignorant or when they discover that they had previously …
Children's ascriptions of knowledge to others
La these de l'egocentrisme dans l'evaluation par l'enfant des connaissances d'autrui est mise a l'epreuve aupres de 45 enfants âges de 3, 4 et 6 ans
In Two Minds
We examined Turkish participants' mindreading accuracy toward ingroup versus outgroup targets. Three hundred and fifty-four Turkish participants were randomly assigned to one of three target groups: Turkish, Syrian, or Norwegian. The mindreading accuracy for these targets was measured along with the perceived cultural similarity of the target to the ingroup, as well as prejudice and threat perception. Participants evidenced higher mindreading acc…
Age Differences in Emotion Recognition Skills and the Visual Scanning of Emotion Faces
Research suggests that a person's emotion recognition declines with advancing years. We examined whether or not this age-related decline was attributable to a tendency to overlook emotion information in the eyes. In Experiment 1, younger adults were significantly better than older adults at inferring emotions from full faces and eyes, though not from mouths. Using an eye tracker in Experiment 2, we found young adults, in comparison with older adu…
Social understanding
Until recently, theory of mind abilities have received little attention beyond the childhood years. However, pioneering work carried out by Happé, Winner, and Brownell (1998) has opened the doors on a new and exciting area of research that examines theory of mind abilities in later years. Happé et al. reported that theory of mind performance was superior in the elderly. Yet, in direct contrast to these findings, Maylor, Moulson, Muncer, and Taylo…
RWAc and SDOc
Right‐wing authoritarianism (RWA) and social dominance orientation (SDO) predict prejudice and discrimination in adults. To create analogous scales for children, we carried out four studies. First, we gave 112 adults from New Zealand (Study 1) and 146 adults from Turkey (Study 2) novel child‐appropriate measures of RWA and SDO, along with the standard adult measures. The two RWA measures correlated more highly with each other than with the SDO me…
Older Adults Respond Quickly to Angry Faces Despite Labeling Difficulty
Two experiments examined young-old differences in speed of identifying emotion faces and labeling of emotion expressions. In Experiment 1, participants were presented arrays of 9 faces in which all faces were identical (neutral expression) or 1 was different (angry, sad, or happy). Both young and older adults were faster identifying faces as "different" when a discrepant face expressed anger than when it expressed sadness or happiness, and this w…
Differences in the Way Older and Younger Adults Rate Threat in Faces But Not Situations
We compared young and healthy older adults' ability to rate photos of faces and situations (e.g., sporting activities) for the degree of threat they posed. Older adults did not distinguish between more and less dangerous faces to the same extent as younger adults did. In contrast, we found no significant age differences in young and older adults' ability to distinguish between high- and low-danger situations. The differences between young and old…
Minding the children
Mothers’ use of mental state talk (MST) is linked to young children’s performance on false belief tests of theory of mind (ToM) and to their behaviour in social contexts. However, little is known about MST beyond the early years. This investigation is the first to examine continuity in both mother and child MST from preschool (age 3–4 years) to middle childhood (age 10) and examines the role of early maternal MST in children’s later ToM and use o…
Variety in parental use of “want” relates to subsequent growth in children’s theory of mind
In 2 cross-lagged, longitudinal studies we contrasted parental talk about want in a single context versus multiple contexts. Study 1 examined thirty-two 2 year olds, with mothers describing pictures to children. Mothers could use want in zero, one, or multiple contexts. Children whose mothers used want in multiple contexts experienced a significantly larger gain in mental state terms over a 6-month period. Study 2 examined 50 preschoolers, measur…
Executive function and theory of mind as predictors of socially withdrawn behavior in institutionalized children
False‐belief understanding and executive functions are two main sociocognitive abilities reliably linked to child social competence. Although institution‐reared children are especially at risk for behavioral problems and cognitive delays, the role that executive function and false‐belief understanding might play in the social withdrawal of institutionalized children has not been examined. The current study used two‐wave data to investigate the co…
Face Age and Eye Gaze Influence Older Adults’ Emotion Recognition
The current study highlights the impact of stimulus face age and gaze direction on emotion recognition in young and older adults. The use of young face stimuli with direct gaze in most research might contribute to age-related emotion recognition differences
Age-Related Differences in Social Economic Decision Making
These findings are discussed in the context of evidence for improved anger regulation and increased prosocial behavior with age
Children's ascriptions of knowledge to others
La these de l'egocentrisme dans l'evaluation par l'enfant des connaissances d'autrui est mise a l'epreuve aupres de 45 enfants âges de 3, 4 et 6 ans
The ABCs of deception
Most research suggests that it is not until age 4 that children understand deception as a means of creating a false belief. Yet children could have failed on these tasks because of either (a) conceptual problems (an inability to understand that deception is a means of creating a false belief), or (b) pragmatic problems (an inability to articulate an understanding of false belief) and task complexity (an inability to follow the narrative or make a…
Episodic Memory and Autonoetic Conciousness
The belief-based emotion of suprise
Three experiments were carried out to determine whether there is a lag in predicting surprise relative to false belief. All 3 experiments used backwards reasoning tasks. The findings were that ( a ) there is a lag in predicting surprise relative to false belief, ( b ) by 5 or 6 years of age children claim that one will be surprised when they gain knowledge of that which they were previously ignorant or when they discover that they had previously …
Older (but not younger) siblings facilitate false belief understanding
Results from 4 experiments and an analysis in which all data from 444 English and Japanese children are pooled show (a) a linear increase in understanding false belief with the number of older siblings, (b) no such effect for children younger than 3 years 2 months, (c) no helpful effect of younger siblings at any age (despite the large sample), (d) no effect of siblings' gender, and (e) no helpful effect of siblings on a task measuring children's…
Why do infants make A not B errors in a search task, yet show memory for the location of hidden objects in a nonsearch task
In 4 experiments, infants aged 8 to 12 months were tested on A not B search tasks, and nonsearch A not B tasks following the violation-of-expectation paradigm. A 1-location task and 2 control tasks were also conducted. In the nonsearch tasks, a toy was hidden in A, moved to B, and retrieved after a delay from either A (impossible) or B (possible). Results showed significantly longer looking times at impossible events, indicating some memory for w…
How Parenting Style Affects False Belief Understanding
This study investigated whether mothers facilitate false belief understanding, and if so, what strategies are particularly relevant. The mothers of 64 3‐ and 4‐year‐olds were given questionnaires eliciting information about mother's education, mother's occupation, number of younger and older siblings, the time the child spends with mother, and about how mothers deal with five disciplinary situations with their child. Three variables were positive…
The Relation between Children's and Mothers’ Mental State Language and Theory-of-Mind Understanding
This study investigated the relation between mothers’ utterances and theory of mind in a longitudinal study involving three time points over 1 year. Mothers were asked to describe some pictures to 82 children at all three time points. Mothers’ use of mental state utterances in these descriptions at early time points was consistently correlated with later theory-of-mind understanding. This was true even when a number of potential mediators were ac…
Is there a Gender Difference in False Belief Development
The contribution of children's social environment to their acquisition of theory of mind skills, combined with the well documented advantage for girls in mental state talk with siblings, peers and mothers, might lead to a female advantage on false belief tasks. We present a post‐hoc analysis of large datasets from two independent laboratories. A slight advantage for girls on false belief task performance was found in both datasets and was only ap…
Social understanding
Until recently, theory of mind abilities have received little attention beyond the childhood years. However, pioneering work carried out by Happé, Winner, and Brownell (1998) has opened the doors on a new and exciting area of research that examines theory of mind abilities in later years. Happé et al. reported that theory of mind performance was superior in the elderly. Yet, in direct contrast to these findings, Maylor, Moulson, Muncer, and Taylo…
Mother and Infant Talk About Mental States Relates to Desire Language and Emotion Understanding
This study assessed the relation between mother mental state language and child desire language and emotion understanding in 15–24-month-olds. At both time points, mothers described pictures to their infants and mother talk was coded for mental and nonmental state language. Children were administered 2 emotion understanding tasks and their mental and nonmental state vocabulary levels were obtained via parental report. The results demonstrated tha…
Differences in the Way Older and Younger Adults Rate Threat in Faces But Not Situations
We compared young and healthy older adults' ability to rate photos of faces and situations (e.g., sporting activities) for the degree of threat they posed. Older adults did not distinguish between more and less dangerous faces to the same extent as younger adults did. In contrast, we found no significant age differences in young and older adults' ability to distinguish between high- and low-danger situations. The differences between young and old…
Age Differences in Emotion Recognition Skills and the Visual Scanning of Emotion Faces
Research suggests that a person's emotion recognition declines with advancing years. We examined whether or not this age-related decline was attributable to a tendency to overlook emotion information in the eyes. In Experiment 1, younger adults were significantly better than older adults at inferring emotions from full faces and eyes, though not from mouths. Using an eye tracker in Experiment 2, we found young adults, in comparison with older adu…
Stepping Stones to Others’ Minds
This continuation of a previous study (Taumoepeau & Ruffman, 2006) examined the longitudinal relation between maternal mental state talk to 15- and 24-month-olds and their later mental state language and emotion understanding (N= 74). The previous study found that maternal talk about the child’s desires to 15-month-old children uniquely predicted children’s mental state language and emotion task performance at 24 months. In the present study, at …
A meta-analytic review of emotion recognition and aging
Older Adults Respond Quickly to Angry Faces Despite Labeling Difficulty
Two experiments examined young-old differences in speed of identifying emotion faces and labeling of emotion expressions. In Experiment 1, participants were presented arrays of 9 faces in which all faces were identical (neutral expression) or 1 was different (angry, sad, or happy). Both young and older adults were faster identifying faces as "different" when a discrepant face expressed anger than when it expressed sadness or happiness, and this w…
Threat Perception in Mild Cognitive Impairment and Early Dementia
Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and dementia affect many aspects of emotion processing. Even though the ability to detect threat is a particularly important aspect of emotion processing, no study to date has assessed threat perception in either of these groups. The purpose of the present study was to test whether individuals with MCI (n = 38) and mild dementia (n = 34) have difficulty differentiating between faces and situations normatively judge…
Recognition of Facial, Auditory, and Bodily Emotions in Older Adults
Understanding older adults' social functioning difficulties requires insight into their recognition of emotion processing in voices and bodies, not just faces, the focus of most prior research. We examined 60 young and 61 older adults' recognition of basic emotions in facial, vocal, and bodily expressions, and when matching faces and bodies to voices, using 120 emotion items. Older adults were worse than young adults in 17 of 30 comparisons, with…
Age-Related Differences in Social Economic Decision Making
These findings are discussed in the context of evidence for improved anger regulation and increased prosocial behavior with age
To belief or not belief
Examining the time course of young and older adults’ mimicry of enjoyment and nonenjoyment smiles
Electromyographic (EMG) research suggests that implicit mimicry of happy facial expressions remains intact with age. However, age-related differences in EMG responses to enjoyment and nonenjoyment smiles have not been explored. The present study assessed younger and older adults' orbicularis oculi (O.oculi; eye) and zygomaticus major (Z.major; cheek) reactions to images of individuals displaying enjoyment and nonenjoyment smiles. Both age groups …
Age differences in right-wing authoritarianism and their relation to emotion recognition
This study examined the correlates of right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) in older adults. Participants were given tasks measuring emotion recognition, executive functions and fluid IQ and questionnaires measuring RWA, perceived threat and social dominance orientation. Study 1 established higher age-related RWA across the age span in more than 2,600 New Zealanders. Studies 2 to 4 found that threat, education, social dominance and age all predicted …
What’s good for the goose is not good for the gander
The findings are discussed in relation to a growing body of research suggesting both age and gender differences in response to emotional stimuli and the differential efficacy of mouth and eyes looking for men and women
Face Age and Eye Gaze Influence Older Adults’ Emotion Recognition
The current study highlights the impact of stimulus face age and gaze direction on emotion recognition in young and older adults. The use of young face stimuli with direct gaze in most research might contribute to age-related emotion recognition differences
Theory of mind and prosocial behavior in childhood
It has been argued that children who possess an advanced theory of mind (ToM) are more likely to act prosocially, yet the empirical findings are mixed. To address this issue definitively, a meta-analytic integration of all prior literature that met appropriate inclusion criteria was conducted. In total, 76 studies including 6,432 children between 2 and 12 years of age contributed to these analyses. Collapsed across all studies, a significant asso…
Psychology (42 obras) · Developmental psychology (39 obras) · Cognition (26 obras) · Cognitive psychology (23 obras) · Social Psychology (21 obras) · Child and Animal Learning Development (20 obras) · Social Psychology (18 obras) · Theory of mind (17 obras) · Face Recognition and Perception (10 obras) · Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development (9 obras)