Development of relational processing in hot and cool tasks.

The research investigated the role of complexity and the hot-cool distinction in cognitive development. The 120, 3- to 6-year-old children completed four hot tasks, which involved an affective component and three cool tasks, which did not. All tasks included binary- and ternary-relational items.

Theory of mind and relational complexity.

Cognitive complexity and control theory and relational complexity theory attribute developmental changes in theory of mind (TOM) to complexity. In 3 studies, 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds performed TOM tasks (false belief, appearance-reality), less complex connections (Level 1 perspective-taking) tasks, and transformations tasks (understanding the effects of location changes and colored filters) with content similar to TOM. There were also predictor tasks at binary-relational and ternary-relational complexity levels, with different content.