Although children often believe an adult's claims, they may have opportunities to check these claims by gathering relevant empirical evidence themselves. Here, we examine whether children seize such opportunities, especially when the claim is counterintuitive. Chinese preschool and elementary schoolchildren were presented with five different-sized…

There is renewed interest in person-centered approaches to understanding the structure of temperament. However, questions concerning temperament types are not frequently framed in a developmental context, especially during infancy. In addition, the most common person-centered techniques, cluster analysis (CA) and latent profile analysis (LPA),…

Whereas some evidence suggests that toddlers consider targets' deservingness when deciding whom to help, other research demonstrates that toddlers help indiscriminately. The present findings shed light on this discrepancy by demonstrating that although toddlers do exhibit selectivity in giving behaviors, their emotional responses are comparatively…

The present study investigated the relations between 4- to 6-year-old children's (N = 67) gender stereotypes, resource allocations, and mental state knowledge in gender-stereotypic contexts. Participants were told vignettes about female and male characters completing gender-stereotyped activities (making dolls or trucks). Children held stereotypic…

We propose that map reading can be construed as a form of analogical mapping. We tested 2 predictions that follow from this claim: First, young children's patterns of performance in map reading tasks should parallel those found in analogical mapping tasks; and, second, children will benefit from guided alignment instructions that help them see the…

English-learning infants attend to lexical stress when learning new words. Attention to lexical stress might be beneficial for word learning by providing an indication of the grammatical class of that word. English disyllabic nouns commonly have trochaic (strong-weak) stress, whereas English disyllabic verbs commonly have iambic (weak-strong)…

Persuasion is an essential social skill. Yet its development and underpinnings are poorly understood. In 2 studies, a total of 167 children aged 3 to 12 years took theory of mind (ToM) tests and participated in unscripted, seminaturalistic persuasive conversations. Children were typically developing (TD) or had deafness or autism spectrum disorder…

The observation that children's activity level (AL) differs between novel and familiar situations is well established. What influences individual differences in how AL is different across these situations is less well understood. Drawing on animal literature, which links rats' AL when 1st placed in a novel setting with novelty seeking phenotypes,…

Given its importance for the emergence of intergroup conflict, the development of other-regarding preferences toward in-group and out-group members has received increasing attention from various disciplines. The present study investigates children's other-regarding preferences toward in-group and out-group members when allocating resources with…

Two experiments were conducted to investigate the influences on 4-8 year-olds' and adults' moral judgments. In both, participants were told stories from previous studies that had indicated that children's judgments are largely outcome-based. Building on recent research in which one change to these studies' methods resulted in substantially more…

Some grips on the handle of a tool can be planned on the basis of information directly available in the scene. Other grips, however, must be planned on the basis of the final position of the hand. "End-state comfort" grips require an awkward or uncomfortable initial grip so as to later implement the action comfortably and efficiently.…

We examined whether the distinction between generic and nongeneric language provides toddlers with a rapid and efficient means to learn about kinds. In Experiment 1, we examined 30-month-olds' willingness to extend atypical properties to members of an unfamiliar category when the properties were introduced in 1 of 3 ways: (a) using a generic noun…

The current study represents the first longitudinal investigation of the potential effects of breastfeeding duration on maternal sensitivity over the following decade. This study also examined whether infant attachment security at 24 months would mediate longitudinal relations between breastfeeding duration and changes in maternal sensitivity over…

Recent research has demonstrated that, when instructed to prioritize a serial position in visual working memory (WM), adults are able to boost performance for this selected item, at a cost to nonprioritized items (e.g., Hu, Hitch, Baddeley, Zhang, & Allen, 2014). While executive control appears to play an important role in this ability, the…

Recent advances in understanding visual working memory, the limited information held in mind for use in ongoing processing, are extended here to examine auditory working memory development. Research with arrays of visual objects has shown how to distinguish the capacity, in terms of the "number" of objects retained, from the…