The goal of the present study was to explore the social behaviours of inhibited children in familiar social contexts, including: (1) free play with peers at preschool and (2) social activities at home and in the community. The initial participants were N = 248 preschool children between the ages of 42 and 66 months. From this initial data, two…

Learning names for parts of objects can be challenging for children, as it requires overcoming their tendency to name whole objects. We test whether comparing items can facilitate learning names for their parts. Applying the structure-mapping theory of comparison leads to two predictions: (a) young children will find it easier to identify a common…

Preschool children's listening time responses to free versus directed listening activities were compared. For the free condition, children were instructed just to "listen as long as you would like." The directed condition was a written task designed to focus attention on specific aspects of the music and give children something concrete to do…