Biological motion perception links diverse facets of theory of mind during middle childhood

• We assessed children’s theory of mind and biological motion perception.
• Controlling for age and IQ, social perception related to both theory of mind tasks.
• Performance on the two theory of mind tasks was not correlated.
• Social perception may link different domains of social cognition.

Two cornerstones of social development—social perception and theory of mind—undergo brain and behavioral changes during middle childhood, but the link between these developing domains is unclear. One theoretical perspective argues that these skills represent domain-specific areas of social development, whereas other perspectives suggest that both skills may reflect a more integrated social system. Given recent evidence from adults that these superficially different domains may be related, the current study examined the developmental relation between these social processes in 52 children aged 7 to 12 years. Controlling for age and IQ, social perception (perception of biological motion in noise) was significantly correlated with two measures of theory of mind: one in which children made mental state inferences based on photographs of the eye region of the face and another in which children made mental state inferences based on stories. Social perception, however, was not correlated with children’s ability to make physical inferences from stories about people. Furthermore, the mental state inference tasks were not correlated with each other, suggesting a role for social perception in linking various facets of theory of mind.