Previous research findings indicate that young children from East Asia outperform their counterparts from Europe and North America on executive function (EF) tasks. However, very few cross-national studies have focused on EF development during middle childhood. The current study assessed the EF performance of 170 children in grades 2 and 4 from…

First-order and advanced theory of mind (ToM and AToM), and their structures and relations were investigated in 229 children aged 5-8 years. ToM was assessed using 6 tasks from the first-order ToM scale, while AToM was measured using an 18-item battery (higher-order false-belief understanding; strange stories; faux pas test; eyes test;…

In 2 studies, we investigated how peers establish a "referential pact" to call something, for example, a "cushion" versus a "pillow" (both equally felicitous). In Study 1, pairs of 4-and 6-year-old German-speaking peers established a referential pact for an artifact, for example, a "woman's shoe," in a…