Organizers

WELLCOME PROJECT: Mindreading, Psychopathology and Social Adjustment in Middle Childhood.

This workshop is part of a WELLCOME project on "Mindreading, Psychopathology and Social Adjustment in Middle Childhood.", held by Dr. Rory T. Devine.

Approximately 10% of children aged between 6 and 12 have a diagnosable mental health disorder. Mental health problems are the leading cause of disability in middle childhood and are linked with peer relationship problems and poor social adjustment at school. Our proof-of-concept study asks whether difficulties understanding others’ thoughts and feelings (or ‘mindreading’) explain why children with mental health problems in middle childhood experience adverse social outcomes. We adopt an innovative group-administered mindreading test to collect data from a large community sample of 8- to 13-year-old children to investigate the links between teacher-rated psychopathology symptoms (e.g., emotional problems, hyperactivity, aggression, autism traits), mindreading, and teacher- and peer-rated social adjustment. We apply a dimensional approach to investigate the specificity of the relations between mindreading and psychopathology, and the extent to which mindreading deficits contribute to social adjustment problems among children with psychopathology symptoms. We use machine learning to create an automated scoring procedure for rating children’s text-based responses to tests of mindreading. The project provides crucial evidence and new methods for a future longitudinal investigation of the developmental links between mental health problems, mindreading and social adjustment in middle childhood.