Empathy and executive functions (EFs) are multimodal constructs that enable individuals to cope with their environment. Both abilities develop throughout childhood and are known to contribute to social behavior and academic performance in young adolescents. Notably, mentalizing and EF activate shared frontotemporal brain areas, which in previous…

A foundational mechanism underlying human cooperation is reciprocity. In the context of repeated interactions with others, it is not always clear the degree to which in-kind responses reflect responsiveness to partners' prior behaviors ("reactive" responses), an interest unrelated to the partner ("nonreactive" responses), or…

Adults value scarce objects, such as rare precious stones and limited edition items. This valuation may derive from an understanding of market forces and sociological considerations, but it may also be related to more basic cognitive and motivational processes. The present studies addressed these possibilities by investigating the development and…

Three experiments showed that gratitude positively affected preschool children's prosocial behavior. In the studies, the experimenter induced gratitude by giving a token gift and then making a request for help or to share resources. Experiment 1 (N = 126, 4- to 6-year-olds) showed that gratitude increased helping behaviors toward the benefactor,…

Previous studies found that bilingual children and adults with typical language development (TLD) perform better than monolinguals in novel word learning, but show lower scores on lexical retrieval tasks (e.g., naming known words). Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) lack in their abilities in both tasks compared with children with…

We examined the development of sharing behavior of children (aged 6 to 12) within the unique, minority population of Christian Arab children in Israel (N = 319). Children had the opportunity to share candy with a needy or non-needy recipient. Parents' level of religiosity was assessed using the Duke University Religion Index questionnaire (DUREL).…

Children's negative emotionality (NE) is frequently associated with parental negativity, but causal understanding of this relationship is limited. In addition, little is known about how genetic and environmental factors affect this relationship during middle childhood. We addressed these gaps by applying a quantitative genetic analysis to…

Identity formation is a key developmental task in adolescence. Although many adolescents in modern societies face issues of identity, there are substantial individual differences in identity exploration and commitment. Little is known about the origins of these individual differences. The current study investigated the genetic and environmental…

Social essentialism, the belief that members of certain social categories share unobservable properties, licenses expectations that those categories are natural and a good basis for inference. A challenge for cognitive developmental theory is to give an account of how children come to develop essentialist beliefs about socially important…

This longitudinal study aimed to differentiate between acculturative and developmental processes by (a) comparing levels and change rates in victimization among ethnic German immigrants and native German adolescents in Germany and Russian Jewish immigrants in Israel, and (b) testing whether interindividual differences in victimization among…

A large linguistic distance exists between spoken Arabic and the Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) the literary language (a diglosia). Novice readers, therefore, struggle with the complex orthography of Arabic as well as the mastering of MSA. Here, we tested whether structured activities in MSA would advance kindergarteners' MSA aptitude by the end of…

The present study explored cultural differences in parental beliefs about motor development across 2 Western cultures: Israel and the Netherlands. Can 2 cultural models be distinguished regarding infant motor development in Israel and the Netherlands or are parental beliefs about motor development similar across these cultures? Using a…

Guided by theories of cultural participation, the authors examined mother-child, father-child, and triadic interactive behaviors in 141 Israeli and Palestinian couples and their firstborn child at 5 and 33 months as antecedents of children's social competence. Four parent-child measures (parent sensitivity, child social engagement, parental…

The social development of 59 kibbutz-reared five-year-olds, whose attachments to mothers, fathers, and metaplott were assessed when they were 11 to 14 months old, was investigated. Findings raise questions regarding the developmental significance of attachment relationships with various significant adults. (RH)

Evaluated the validity of Kohlberg's model and measure in a cross-cultural context and assessed the cultural uniqueness of social-moral reasoning among 92 Israeli kibbutz adolescents. Developmental findings strongly supported validity of Kohlberg's structural-developmental understanding of moral judgment. Stage change was found to be upward,…