The role of working memory (WM) in language acquisition has been widely reported in the developmental literature, but few studies have explored the role of sentence recall in the way WM and related linguistic abilities evolve. This study seeks to explore the organization and development of the memory architecture underlying language using a…

Motor skills have been linked to language and social development with implications for theory of mind. This study examined theory of mind (attribution of intentions task) in school-age children (N = 62, mean age 8 years; 2 months, standard deviation [SD] = 1;3) in relation to fine motor skills (grooved pegboard), receptive vocabulary (Peabody…

Two main theoretical constructs seek to describe the elaborated sense of time that may be a uniquely human attribute: diachronic thinking (the ability to think about the past and use that information to predict future events) and event ordering (the ability to sequence events in temporal order). Researchers utilize various tasks to measure the…

This article documents differences in cognitive development, as measured by the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT), between children from households with high and low socioeconomic status (SES) in two different phases of early childhood in four developing countries. A large number of potential mediators, such as urban residence, preschool…

Difficulties in peer acceptance during elementary school have been associated with emotional and behavioural problems. This study used a randomized controlled intervention design to test whether improvements in peer acceptance mediated reduced rates of emotional and behavioural problems in intervention compared to control-group children. A total…

Temperamentally exuberant children may be at risk for emotion regulation problems, but this may also depend on their capacity for effortful control. To examine this issue, we assessed 72 typically-developing 3- to 5-year-olds. Child exuberance, effortful control, and emotion regulation were assessed via maternal report and observations of child…

Describes research on memory in preschool children. Each child was studied for scene and list memory. Domain-specific and general knowledge were not found to be strongly related to memory performance. Object typicality did not have a strong effect on memory, but size did. (GH)

Two studies investigated the influence of age, language, and family background on the development of preschoolers' social cognitive skills. Study 1 examined variability in economically disadvantaged preschoolers' understanding of fantasy and evaluated the relation of age and language to children's skill in this area. Children were shown drawings…