This study examines preschoolers' acquisition of the maxims of the Cooperative Principle and the sociocognitive scaffolds that support this acquisition. In Study 1, 84 children between 3 and 5 years old were required to make passive judgments of violations of the Cooperative Principle. Results showed that children consistently identified…

Recent studies suggest that there appears to be a similar developmental sequence in the understanding of mental states in both internal-state language and in standard theory-of-mind tasks. These findings suggest possible developmental relations between children's ability to talk and think about the mind. Two experiments investigated the concurrent…

There is a growing awareness among developmental scientists that the better a child can self-regulate, the better she can rise to the challenge of mastering ever more complex skills and concepts. In the simplest terms, self-regulation can be defined as the ability to stay calmly focused and alert, which often involves--but cannot be reduced…