This research examined the effects of overhearing an adult praise an unseen child for not needing to work hard on an academic task. Five-year-old Han Chinese children (total N = 270 across three studies; 135 boys, collected 2020-2021) who heard this low effort praise tended to devalue effort relative to a baseline condition in which the overheard…

Optimal integration of positive and negative outcomes during learning varies depending on an environment's reward statistics. The present study investigated the extent to which children, adolescents, and adults (N = 142 8-25 year-olds, 55% female, 42% White, 31% Asian, 17% mixed race, and 8% Black; data collected in 2021) adapt their weighting of…

This study investigates the effectiveness of the PRIMA antibullying program for elementary education using a cluster-randomized trial with two experimental conditions (with and without student lessons) and a control group. Students of 31 schools participated in the study (N = 3,135; M[subscript age] = 10 years). Multilevel regression analyses…

This mixed methods study examined parent-reported child screen media use before and during the COVID-19 pandemic by examining 2019-2020 changes in parent perceptions of media, screen media use (SMU), and problematic media use (PMU) in children aged 2-13 years (N = 129; 64 boys, 64 girls, 1 nonbinary; 90.7% White, 4.6% Hispanic/Latino, 0.8% Black,…

Using psychological network analysis, this study explored the heterogeneity of the network structure between extracurricular time-use and delinquency using a nationally representative longitudinal survey of at-school students in China (N = 10,279, 47.3% female, average age 13.6, 91.2% Han ethnicity). The results are threefold: First, time…

Studies with adults suggest that implicit preferences favoring White versus Black individuals can be reduced through exposure to positive Black exemplars. However, it remains unclear whether developmental differences exist in the capacity for these biases to be changed. This study included 369 children and examined whether their implicit racial…

Teaching supports the high-fidelity transmission of knowledge and skills. This study examined similarities and differences in caregiver teaching practices in the United States and Vanuatu (N = 125 caregiver and 3- to 8-year-old child pairs) during a collaborative problem-solving task. Caregivers used diverse verbal and nonverbal teaching practices…

In laboratory studies, praising children's effort encourages them to adopt incremental motivational frameworks--they believe ability is malleable, attribute success to hard work, enjoy challenges, and generate strategies for improvement. In contrast, praising children's inherent abilities encourages them to adopt fixed-ability…

Monolingual children were assigned to two groups to examine the role of reinforcement in language acquisition. One group was differentially reinforced for use of foreign vocabulary. The other group was first reinforced nondifferentially for use of either native or foreign language and later differentially reinforced for foreign language use. (PCB)

Subjects were six normal infants whose kicks were or were not reinforced. Examines how the temporal structure of kicking changed when infants learned a mobile task. Quantifies amplitude changes in spontaneous kicks versus those used operantly, and investigates whether reinforcement makes kicking more "efficient" through reducing…

Tested the persistence over 24 hours of reward-expectation habits in infants. A comparison was made between the responses of two groups of infants (infants with a history of reinforcement with large, complex mobiles, and infants with no prior history of reinforcement with mobiles) on a task reinforced by a small mobile. (Author/SS)

Findings confirmed that whereas six- to eight-month-old infants revealed reliable acquisition under immediate reinforcement, a three-second delay precluded response acquisition, as did six-second and ten-second delay of reinforcement. A modified delayed-reinforcement scheduling procedure enabled a previous methodological criticism to be…

Relationship between maternal ratings of temperament and operant learning was examined in 18 2- to 3-month-old infants. Subjects participated in a conjugate reinforcement experiment; mothers of subjects completed the Carey and McDevitt Revised Infant Temperament Questionnaire 2 to 3 days before the learning study. Two temperament dimensions,…

Contrasts effects of three modes of mother/child interaction on children's subsequent compliance with maternal directives. Subjects were 39 children from lower-middle-class families, ranging in age from approximately three to four-and-a-half. Responsive play and noninteractive conditions produced higher levels of compliance than the untrained free…

In human infancy, 2 criteria for intentional communication are (a) persistence in and (b) elaboration of communication when initial attempts to communicate fail. Twenty-nine chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) were presented with both desirable (a banana) and undesirable food (commercial primate chow). Three conditions were administered: (a) the banana…