Theory of mind (ToM) involves understanding others' thoughts and feelings and is related to language abilities. Individuals with communication disorders are at risk of ToM difficulties; however, little is known about speech-language pathologists' (SLPs') knowledge, perceptions, and educational preparation related to ToM.U.S.SLPs (N = 95) completed…

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…

Purpose: This study examined the impact of bilingualism on affective theory of mind (ToM) and social prioritization (SP) among autistic adults compared to neurotypical comparison participants. Method: Fifty-two (25 autistic, 27 neurotypical) adult participants (ages 21-35 years) with varying second language (L2) experience, ranging from…

This paper explores how primary teachers might be prepared through their pre-service training to feel more confident to include engineering in their teaching. Prompted by concerns about young people's lack of interest in STEM subjects and careers, engineering is gradually gaining visibility in the primary curriculum in several forms, particularly…

This study examined children's understanding of irony when a difference existed between a speaker's intended meaning and a listener's interpretation of the meaning. Three irony contexts were presented to 87 7/8-year-olds (second graders), 90 11/12-year-olds (sixth graders), and 103 adults. In the normal irony context, the speaker intended to…

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…

Adults conceptualize God as particularly knowledgeable -- more knowledgeable than humans -- about moral transgressions. We investigated how younger (4- to 5-year-old) and older (6- to 7-year-old) children view God's moral knowledge. Cultural narratives in the United States portray God as omniscient, which could lead children growing up in the…

If a child asks a friend to play football and the friend replies, 'I have a cough', the requesting child must make a 'relevance inference' to determine the communicative intent. Relevance inferencing is a key component of pragmatics, that is, the ability to integrate social context into language interpretation and use. We tested which cognitive…

Early scientific thinking in kindergarten (6-year-olds) was investigated in a large study involving 227 participants. We investigated (1) whether individual differences across 3 scientific-thinking components (experimentation, data interpretation, and understanding the nature of science) are stable across children, (2) whether children's increased…

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…

It has been debated whether the progressive emergence of theory of mind (ToM) in autistic children is compatible with a "delayed" or "different" development model, and whether and how the sequential consolidation of ToM concepts is subject to cross-cultural variations in autistic and typically developing (TD) children. To study…

Background: Writing involves multiple processes, drawing on a number of language, cognitive, and print-related skills, and knowledge. According to the Direct and Indirect Effects model of Writing (DIEW; Kim & Park, 2019, "Reading and Writing," 32, 1319), these multiple factors have hierarchical, interactive, and dynamic relations.…

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…

Background: Writing involves multiple processes, drawing on a number of language, cognitive, and print-related skills, and knowledge. According to the Direct and Indirect Effects model of Writing (DIEW; Kim & Park, 2019, "Reading and Writing," 32, 1319), these multiple factors have hierarchical, interactive, and dynamic relations.…