Research Findings: Although crucial in early childhood, social and emotional learning (SEL) was seldom integrated in preschool classrooms until recently. This study reports the implementation and evaluation of an SEL program devised to assist Chinese preschoolers, a population that has been understudied. With cultural values/practices impacting…

When deciding whether to explore, agents must consider both their need for information and its cost. Do children recognize that exploration reflects a trade-off between action costs and expected information gain, inferring epistemic states accordingly? In two experiments, 4- and 5-year-olds (N = 144; of diverse race and ethnicity) judge that an…

Although preschoolers have strong expectations about the pedagogical nature of pointing gestures (Csibra & Gergely, 2006), more recent work has shown that preschoolers prefer to use informants' spoken language, not their pointing gestures, to make judgments about their reliability (Palmquist & Jaswal, 2015). Here, we explored children's…

Testimony is a valuable source of information for young learners, in particular if children maintain vigilance against errors while still being open to learning from imperfectly knowledgeable sources. We find support for this idea by examining how children evaluate individual speakers who present very different epistemic risks by being previously…

Epistemology is a branch of philosophy that focuses on the source, nature, limitations, system and accuracy of human knowledge. Children's epistemological views start to develop in the very early years as they gradually develop the ability to understand others' beliefs, actions, and desires, with primary attention to the onset of this cognitive…

Effective communication requires knowing the "right" amount of information to provide; what is necessary for a naïve learner to arrive at a target hypothesis may be superfluous and inefficient for a knowledgeable learner. The current study examines 4- to 7-year-olds' developing sensitivity to overinformative communication and their…

The current study investigated the role of theory of mind development in school readiness among 120 low-income preschool and kindergarten children. A short-term longitudinal design was used to examine relations among theory of mind, the understanding of teaching, and learning behaviors and their collective role in children's literacy and numeracy…

Little is known about how and when preschoolers master the concept of teaching, particularly in relation to the acquisition of theory of mind (ToM). We investigated the relationship between the two in children aged 3-6 years old. One hundred and seventeen French preschool pupils answered questions about different teaching situations illustrated in…

A critical skill in emergent writing is the developing ability to take the perspective of different readers; however, the precursors of this skill have not yet been identified. In this longitudinal study, 105 children (90 after attrition) were tested at 3 time points: pre-kindergarten (3-4 years old, n = 105), kindergarten (5 years old, n = 97),…

Research Findings: Emotion knowledge (EK) enables children to identify emotions in themselves and others, and its development facilitates emotion recognition in complex social situations. Sociocognitive processes, such as theory of mind (ToM), may contribute to developing EK by helping children realize the inherent variability associated with…