Not just quantity but also quality of language: Cross-cultural comparisons of maternal mental state talk in New Zealand, Australia, and China.

Western mothers use more mental state talk with children than do Chinese mothers (e.g., "think", "like", "happy").

Recognition of facial emotions across the lifespan: 8-year-olds resemble older adults.

On standard emotion recognition tasks with relatively long or unlimited stimuli durations, recognition improves as children grow older, whereas older adults are worse than young adults. Crucially, it was unknown (a) how older adults compare to age groups below young adulthood and (b) whether children can recognize emotions at shorter durations, with short durations likely common in real life. We compared emotion recognition in 5-year-olds, 8-year-olds, young adults and older adults at very brief durations (50 ms, 250 ms) as well as standard unlimited durations.

General cognitive decline does not account for older adults' worse emotion recognition and theory of mind.

Older adults have both worse general cognition and worse social cognition. A frequent suggestion is that worse social cognition is due to worse general cognition. However, previous studies have often provided contradictory evidence.