The purpose of the study is to examine young children's (4- to 7-year-old) selective trust decisions in two different data sets; one was for selecting from whom to ask information and the other was for interpersonal trust decision where children encountered with two research assistants; one provided precise and the other provided relative…

This research investigates positive future expectancies, particularly hope in children, which is comprised of agency thinking, perceiving oneself as capable of achieving goals, and pathways thinking, perceiving oneself as capable of discovering methods toward the desired goals. Two studies (n = 82) were conducted in the United States to examine…

During the course of a program evaluation for Footprints Dance Project Society of Alberta, we uncovered a discrepancy between children and parents regarding both motivation for program participation and expected outcomes. At Footprints Dance Project, we work with a diverse group of children, primarily from low socioeconomic backgrounds. Despite…

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced children to reckon with the causal relations underlying disease transmission. What are children's theories of how COVID-19 is transmitted? And how do they understand the relation between COVID-19 susceptibility and the need for disease-mitigating behavior? We asked these questions in the context of children's…

Previous research about refugee students' experiences with online learning has focused on the challenges faced by refugee youth, their families, and schools without addressing what strengths families might bring to this type of learning. Further, while previous research has touched upon refugee youth and their families' substantial digital…

This study describes how 3- to 8-year-olds' justifications for their reality status judgements about people on YouTube relates to their age and previous YouTube watching experience. Using a within-subjects design, children were asked about their beliefs regarding the reality status of a purported YouTube video and provided justifications for their…

Children have a robust social preference for people similar to them, like those who share their language, accent, and race. In the present research, we show that this preference can diminish when children consider who they want to learn about. Across three experiments, 4- to 6-year-olds (total N = 160; 74 female, 86 male, from the Waterloo region…

Children are sensitive to their own and others' epistemic states and use these to guide their learning and communication. Here, we systematically examined children's use of epistemic states to make diagnostic social inferences. Specifically, we investigated children's group membership inferences based on what others do and do not know and what…

Exchanges of help between children are common and often have positive consequences. But not all help is equally beneficial, for example because some help does not provide an opportunity to practice and develop skills. Here I examine whether young children might perpetuate competence-based inequality by providing incompetent peers with less…

This article focuses on children's opinions (aged 7-12) regarding their views on intercultural non-formal education activities carried out by Polish non-governmental organisations (NGOs). The study was conducted through unstructured interviews, with 65 participants. The results of the research show that, thanks to its character (active learning),…

From early in development, race biases how children think about gender--often in a manner that treats Black women as less typical and representative of "women in general" than White or Asian women. The present study (N = 89, ages 7-11; predominately Hispanic, White, and multi-racial children) examined the generalizability of this…

People's attitudes influence the nature of their interactions with wildlife and support for conservation. Globally, many environmental education programs seek to influence children's attitudes toward wildlife and the environment. Understanding these attitudes requires assessment tools that are appropriate to the context and culture. However, most…

In the interest of understanding choices related to achievement, persistence, and performance that inform pursuit of careers in science, technology, engineering, and math, the current research pursued a novel approach to asking young children about their beliefs related to engineering. The Engineering-Related Activities and Skills (ERAS) items…

The study aims to contribute to knowledge of children's views on their space to fend for themselves at a time in their lives when they face change and decreased institutional care, i.e. in the transition from organized to unorganized after-school activities. The study builds on interviews with 22 children who are about to leave or change…

This case study examines emergent, evolving language ideologies of a trilingual child, from age 3-7, who was simultaneously acquiring two heritage languages, Korean and Farsi, as well as English in the United States. A qualitative analysis of the child's conversations in a naturally occurring home context extends the literature centered on the…