According to Vygotsky's cultural-historical activity theory, pretend play can be an important context for the development of children's social competence. The aim of this meta-analysis was to synthesize the current evidence about the relation between pretend play and social competence in early childhood (age 3-8 years). A systematic literature…

Adults remember items with shared contexts as occurring closer in time to one another than those associated with different contexts, even when their objective temporal distance is fixed. Such temporal memory biases are thought to reflect within-event integration and between-event differentiation processes that organize events according to their…

Fixel-based analysis was used to probe age-related changes in white matter micro- and macrostructure of the corpus callosum between participants with (N = 54) and without (N = 50) autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Data were obtained from the Autism Brain Imaging Data Exchange-II (ABIDE-II). Compared to age-matched controls, young adolescents with…

Currently, the prevalence of autism spectrum disorder (henceforth "autism") is 1 in 36, an increasing trend from previous estimates. In 2015, the United States adopted a new version (International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision) of the World Health Organization coding system, a standard for classifying medical conditions. Our…

Relatively little work has focused on why we are motivated to learn words. In adults, recent experiments have shown that intrinsic reward signals accompany successful word learning from context. In addition, the experience of reward facilitated long-term memory for words. In adolescence, developmental changes are seen in reward and motivation…

The current research examined how seeking versus receiving help affected children's memory and confidence decisions. Baseline performance, when no help was available, was compared to performance when help could be sought (Experiment 1: N = 83, 41 females) or was provided (Experiment 2: N = 84, 44 females) in a sample of predominately White 5-, 7-,…

Across two studies, children ages 6-9 (N = 160, 82 boys, 78 girls; 75% White, 91% non-Hispanic) rated an inaccurate expert's knowledge and provided explanations for the expert's inaccurate statements. In Study 1, children's knowledge ratings decreased as he provided more inaccurate information. Ratings were predicted by age (i.e., older children…

Values serve as guiding principles, motivating specific behaviors, and actions. Peers spend a considerable amount of time together, thus offering a unique platform for the acquisition and development of values. During adolescence, a stage of life when youth are actively defining their identities, peers emerge as vital social agents, contributing…

Speech exhibits quasi-rhythmic regularities at multiple timescales, which seem to be crucial to comprehension. Both children's ability to extract rhythm from complex stimuli and to produce rhythmic patterns are known to undergo changes from infancy to adulthood. However, it remains unclear what rhythm skills specifically related to speech look…

Young children tend to behave more generously when their actions are identified than when they are anonymous, yet we know little about the cognitive foundations required for anonymity to impact generosity. In three studies we examined Canadian children's understanding of anonymity and its impact on sharing in anonymous and identified contexts.…

Young children tend to deny the possibility of events that violate their expectations, including events that are merely improbable, like making onion-flavored ice cream or owning a crocodile as a pet. Could this tendency be countered by teaching children more valid strategies for judging possibility? We explored this question by training children…

Background and Aims: Epidemiological studies have provided invaluable insight into the origin and impact of low language skills in childhood and adolescence. However, changing terminology and diagnostic guidelines have contributed to variable estimations of the prevalence of developmental language difficulties. The aim of this review was to…

The distance between the birth date and the school entry cutoff has been repeatedly used as an exogenous instrument to examine the impact of several educational programmes. In this work, we analyse the validity of this instrument for the case of Argentina. Considering multiple waves of the Permanent Household Survey we detect the existence of…

Research on gesture development has mostly focused on home environments. Little is known about early communicative development in other relevant contexts, such as early-year-schools. These settings, rich in diverse educative situations, objects, and communicative partners, provide a contrast to parent-child interactions, complementing our…

This research explored early ecological-moral sense, by investigating 2.5- and 5-year-old children's evaluations of overt and covert pro-environmental actions using both rewarding and reaching paradigms (N = 96; 100% White). In Experiment 1, the overt pro-environmental action was compared with the action of harming the environment. In Experiment…