In the present study, quantitative and qualitative data are presented to examine individual and contextual predictors of bullying and victimization and how they vary by age and gender. Two waves of survey data were collected from 2,678 elementary, middle, and high school youth attending 59 schools. In addition, 14 focus groups were conducted with…

The availability of educational programming aimed at infants and toddlers is increasing, yet the effect of video on language acquisition remains unclear. Three studies of 96 children aged 30-42 months investigated their ability to learn verbs from video. Study 1 asked whether children could learn verbs from video when supported by live social…

Two comprehension experiments were conducted to investigate whether German children are able to use the grammatical cues of word order and word endings (case markers) to identify agents and patients in a causative sentence and whether they weigh these two cues differently across development. Two-year-olds correctly understood only sentences with…

Two studies examined the role of intention in preschoolers' understanding of teaching. Three- to 5-year-olds judged stories in which there was an intention to teach or not (teaching vs. imitation) for 4 different learning outcomes (successful, partial, failed, and unknown). They also judged 2 stories with embedded instructional intent (e.g.,…

Two experiments examined the development of recollection (recalling qualitative details about an event) and familiarity (recognizing the event) using the dual-process signal detection model. In Experiment 1 (n = 117; ages 6, 8, 10, 14, and 18 years), recollection improved from childhood to adolescence after semantic encoding but not after…

Early development of body self-awareness was examined in 57 children at 18, 22, or 26 months of age, using tasks designed to require objective representation of one's own body. All children made at least one body representation error, with approximately 2.5 errors per task on average. Errors declined with age. Children's performance on comparison…

The present research examined the influence of prior knowledge on children's free recall, cued recall, recognition memory, and source memory judgments for a series of similar real-life events. Forty children (5-12 years old) attended 4 thematic birthday parties and were later interviewed about the events that transpired during the parties using…

Processing the self-relevance of information facilitates recall. Similarly, processing close-other-related information facilitates recall to a lesser degree than processing self-relevant information. This memory advantage may be viewed as an index of the degree to which the representation of self is differentiated from representations of close…

To examine the development of feedforward control during manual tracking, 117 participants in 5 age groups (6 to 7, 8 to 9, 10 to 11, 12 to 14, and 15 to 17 years) tracked an accelerating dot presented on a monitor by moving an electronic pen on a digitizer. To remain successful at higher target velocities, they had to create a predictive model of…

Changes in visual attention and story comprehension for children (N = 132) with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and comparison peers were examined. Between the ages of 7 and 9 (Phase 1) and approximately 21 months later (Phase 2), children viewed 2 televised stories: 1 in the presence of toys and 1 in their absence. Both groups of…

This study examined the effects of coaching (encouragement and rehearsal of false reports) and truth induction (a child-friendly version of the oath or general reassurance about the consequences of disclosure) on 4- to 7-year-old maltreated children's reports (N = 198). Children were questioned using free recall, repeated yes-no questions, and…

A crucial skill in scientific and everyday reasoning is the ability to interpret data. The present study examined how data features influence data interpretation. In Experiment 1, one hundred and thirty-three 9-year-olds, 12-year-olds, and college students (mean age = 20 years) were shown a series of data sets that varied in the number of…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the distinct forms (i.e., physical and relational) and functions (i.e., proactive and reactive) of aggressive behavior during early childhood (n = 101; M age = 45.09 months). Forms, but not functions, of aggressive behavior were stable over time. A number of contributors to aggression were associated…

The current longitudinal study of 323 Latino adolescents (50.5% male; M age = 15.31 years) examined whether ethnic identity exploration, resolution, and affirmation demonstrated significant growth over a 4-year period and whether growth in ethnic identity predicted growth in self-esteem. Findings from multiple-group latent growth curve models…

Six experiments examined children's ability to make inferences using temporal order information. Children completed versions of a task involving a toy zoo; one version required reasoning about past events (search task) and the other required reasoning about future events (planning task). Children younger than 5 years failed both the search and the…