This study aims at investigating the relationship between working memory updating and working memory capacity in preschool children. A sample of 176 preschoolers (36-74 months) was administered a working memory updating task (Magic House) along with three working memory capacity tests that specifically measure their core attentional component (M…

Most cooperative interactions involve interpersonal trust and the expectation of mutual reciprocation. Thus, understanding when and how humans acquire interpersonal trust can help unveil the origins and development of children's cooperative behavior. Here, we investigated whether prior sociomoral information about trading partners modulates the…

Several models of working memory (WM) have been proposed in the literature. Most of the research on the architecture of WM is based on adults or older children, but less is known about younger children. In this study, we tested various models of WM on a sample of 739 Italian children, ranging in age from 3 to 8 years, primarily of European…

Among the existing sign language assessment tools, only a small number can be used in clinical settings. This contribution aims at presenting three comprehension assessment tests (two lexical and one syntactic) that offer a solid basis to build tools to assess language impairments in deaf signing adults. We provide the material and guidelines,…

This study investigated developmental differences in metacognitive monitoring and control in younger (5- to 6-year-old) and older (8- to 10-year-old) children's prospective memory (PM). Metacognitive monitoring was assessed by asking the children to judge their performance before (prediction) and after (postdiction) performing a resource-demanding…

Playing is essential for the development of higher psychological functions. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate that playing constitutes an essential step in children's socio-cognitive development by describing playtime as the indicator of the gradual overcoming of self-centred thinking, with a view to acquiring new social adjustment…

Research findings: This study advances our understanding of early childhood teachers' emotion socialization styles by innovatively exploring how these relate to teachers' beliefs about emotions and levels of mind-mindedness, while controlling for age, level of education, teaching experience, and training in emotion education. Sixty female teachers…

Noun and verb acquisition was investigated in three- and five-year-old Italian children by means of picture naming of objects and actions, selected from Druks and Masterson (2000). The aim was to examine the previously reported advantage of nouns compared to verbs. Older children were faster than younger children, and naming latencies were faster…

Narratives have been extensively studied in recent decades, but studies investigating differences and similarities in the narrative features from a cross-cultural or cross-linguistic point of view are limited. This study investigated the narrative language of typically developing monolingual four- and eight-year-old Finnish, Italian and Canadian…

Background: In recent years many studies have shown that the use of cochlear implants (CIs) improves children's skills in processing the auditory signal and, consequently, the development of both language comprehension and production. Nevertheless, many authors have also reported that the development of language skills in children with CIs is…

In the number-to-position task, with increasing age and numerical expertise, children's pattern of estimates shifts from a biased (nonlinear) to a formal (linear) mapping. This widely replicated finding concerns symbolic numbers, whereas less is known about other types of quantity estimation. In Experiment 1, Preschool, Grade 1, and Grade 3…

In the present study, the authors aimed to assess the short- and long-term predictive power of the various components of an emergent literacy model on early writing abilities in a language with a mainly transparent orthography (Italian). Emergent literacy skills were assessed in 72 children (M age = 5.05 years, SD = plus or minus 0.03) who were…

Children's sense of numbers before formal education is thought to rely on an approximate number system based on logarithmically compressed analog magnitudes that increases in resolution throughout childhood. School-age children performing a numerical estimation task have been shown to increasingly rely on a formally appropriate, linear…

Research Findings: This study examined whether the communicative behaviors of preschoolers during shared-reading interactions differ according to child age or parent gender. Twenty Italian preschoolers (from 3.1 to 5.11 years) were observed during book reading with each parent separately. Communicative behaviors were analyzed according to the…

Few studies have explored the development of the gesture-speech system after the two-word stage. Aim of the present study is to examine developmental changes in speech and gesture use, in the context of a simple naming task. Fifty-one children (age range: 2;3-7;6) were divided into five age groups and requested to name pictures representing…