🎭 Social and cognitive development: They're like the best of friends, each influencing the other. Our ability to understand others' viewpoints (also called perspective-taking), which leads to the theory of mind, is the foundation for successful social interactions. But, social skills are so much more than just cognitive abilities! They are the secret sauce that allows us to interact with others effectively, whether we're ordering a pizza or debating in class.

🔍 Understanding Social Skills Through Peer Interaction: So, how do we understand how social skills develop? The playground! Here we can observe the growth of simple skills which then build into more complex social competencies.

⚽ Example: Manuilenko's Study (1948): Manuilenko played a game with kids to understand the development of self-regulation (one of the basic social skills). He set up three scenarios

• A child was the "sentry" (like a guard) in a game where everyone else was in the same room.
• Same sentry job, but this time, our little guard was alone in a different room.
• No game, but the child was asked to stand still in front of their peers.

Interestingly, children stood still for longer during the game when everyone was in the same room. The other kids often told the "sentry" not to move, which seemed to strengthen the sentry's self-control. Eventually, this control becomes part of the child's behavior and voila! We have self-regulation.