In industrialized societies, adults exhibit stable preferences for the types of people, animals, and entities they feel moral concern for (Crimston et al., 2016). Only one published study to date has utilized the moral circles paradigm to examine these preferences in children, finding that as children age, their preferences shift to become more…

This study investigated whether familiarity and expertise of a dissenter would lessen the trust of a three-person majority among preschoolers in a Chinese sample. The results indicated that preschoolers preferred to trust a majority rather than a stranger dissenter. However, when familiarity and expertise of the dissenter were manipulated in the…

Word identification accuracy is modulated by many factors including linguistic characteristics of words (frequent vs. infrequent), listening environment (noisy vs. quiet), and listener-related differences (older vs. younger). Nearly, all studies investigating these factors use high-familiarity words and noise signals that are either energetic…

Although stories for children often feature supernatural and fantastical events, children themselves often prefer realistic events when choosing what should happen in a story. In two experiments, we investigated whether 3- to 5-year-olds (total N = 240 from diverse backgrounds) might be more likely to include fantastical events in stories about…

Defining developmental progressions can be an important step in identifying developmental precursors and mechanisms of change, within and across areas of reasoning. In one exploratory study, we examine whether the development of children's thinking about ownership follows a systematic progression wherein some components emerge reliably before…

In the current research, we aimed to investigate whether there are significant differences in participants' attitudes towards adults with disabilities (AWD) and children with disabilities (CWD). We also explored a series of demographical factors (i.e. gender, age, educational level, parental status, contact with a friend or a family member with a…

The frequency and length of games, conflicts, and contingency sequences that took place between toddlers as they got to know one another were studied using archival data. The sample consisted of 28 unfamiliar 20- and 30-month-old toddlers (predominantly White, 16 males) who met separately with each of two other toddlers for 18 play dates. The…

This article presents two studies that tested the predictive validity of intergroup contact theory and secondary transfer effects related to pre-service teacher attitudes toward sexual minority youth in classrooms. Multiple regression of feeling thermometer scores in Study 1 (N = 989) suggested that more favorable attitudes are present among…

We tested whether changes in attribution processes could account for the developmental differences observed in how children's use fluency to guide their memory decisions. Children ranging in age from 4 to 9 years studied a list of familiar or unfamiliar cartoon characters. In Experiment 1 (n = 84), participants completed a recognition test during…

As children get older, they become better able to discriminate between impossible and improbable statements and they realize that improbable events can occur in reality while impossible ones cannot. However, when children hear about extraordinary events from fictional entities (e.g., popular characters from children's media), they may be more…

With pursuit of incremental progress and generalizability of findings in mind, we examined a possible boundary for older and younger adults' metacognitive distinction between what is not stored in memory versus merely inaccessible with materials that are not process pure to knowledge or events: information regarding news events. Participants were…

Speech-language therapy is a growing field in many Asian countries, including Malaysia. Yet, no studies have examined the general public's awareness towards communication disorders and speech-language therapy in Malaysia. A total of 535 respondents completed a questionnaire, using Google form or paper-pencil format, to assess their awareness and…

Visual scene displays (VSDs) are becoming an increasingly popular method of message representation within augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) supports; however, design factors can influence the effectiveness of these images as communication supports. One issue that has come to light in recent years is the fact that selecting…

In order to explore the development mechanism of construction theory in the field of moral judgment, this study investigated the influence of age and social distance on such moral expectations in positive moral context and negative moral context. In both positive and negative moral contexts, 5-6-year-old children had the highest moral expectations…

Our ability to perceive our own and other people's bodies is critical to the success of social interactions. Research has shown that adults have a distorted perception of their own body and those of other adults. However, these studies ask perceivers to estimate for adults with a similar bodily make-up. This study explored the developmental…