New directions in evaluating social problem solving in childhood: early precursors and links to adolescent social competence.

A major objective of this chapter is to present a novel, ecologically sensitive social problem-solving task for school-aged children that captures the complexity of social and cognitive demands placed on children in naturalistic situations. Competence on this task correlates with a range of skills including executive functions, verbal reasoning, and attention. Children able to successfully carry out this task in middle school were more competent in early adolescence in collaborating in joint problem-solving tasks with peers and solving conflicts with parents.