Semantic knowledge can be extended in a variety of ways, including self-generation of new facts through integration of separate yet related episodes. We sought to promote integration and self-generation by providing "hints" to help 6-year-olds (Experiment 1) and 4-year-olds (Experiment 2) see the relevance of separate episodes to one…

Previous cross-cultural research using false-belief tasks has explored whether children's theory of mind develops synchronously across cultures. Success on false-belief tasks is usually interpreted as an important indicator of children's mental state understanding, but inconsistent findings have led to questions regarding the interpretation of…

The present research explores the role of inhibitory control (IC) in young preschoolers' pretense ability using an ego depletion paradigm. In Experiment 1 (N = 56), children's pretense ability was assessed either before or after participating in conflict IC or control tasks, and in Experiment 2 (N = 36), pretense ability was measured after…

In simple rule-switching tests, 3- and 4-year-olds can follow each of two sorting rules but sometimes make perseverative errors when switching. Older children make few errors but respond slowly when switching. These age-related changes might reflect the maturation of executive functions (e.g., inhibition). However, they might also reflect…

Contrast information could be useful for verb learning, but few studies have examined children's ability to use this type of information. Contrast may be useful when children are told explicitly that different verbs apply, or when they hear two different verbs in a single context. Three studies examine children's attention to different types of…

Two studies investigated young 2- and 3-year-old Turkish children's developing understanding of normativity and freedom to act in games. As expected, children, especially 3-year-olds, protested more when there was a norm violation than when there was none. Surprisingly, however, no decrease in normative protest was observed even when the actor…

We tested whether mental rotation training improved math performance in 6- to 8-year-olds. Children were pretested on a range of number and math skills. Then one group received a single session of mental rotation training using an object completion task that had previously improved spatial ability in children this age (Ehrlich, Levine, &…

The effects of warning on false recognition and associated subjective experience of false recollection and familiarity were investigated in 7-to 13-year-old children and young adults (N = 259) using the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm. Two warning conditions (warning with an example of a critical lure and warning without an example of a…

Warning others is a paradigm case of communicative helping and prospective action understanding. The current study addressed the ontogeny of warning in infants' gestural communication. We found that 12- and 18-month-olds ("n" = 84) spontaneously warned an adult by pointing out to her an aversive object hidden in her way…

Previous research into face processing in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has revealed atypical biases toward particular facial information during identity recognition. Specifically, a focus on features (or high spatial frequencies [HSFs]) has been reported for both face and nonface processing in ASD. The current study investigated the development…

Previous research suggests that 3-year-olds fail to learn from statistical data when their prior beliefs conflict with evidence. Are children's beliefs entrenched in their folk theories, or can preschoolers rationally update their beliefs? Motivated by a Bayesian account, we conducted a training study to investigate this question. Children (45…

This study aimed to explore the recognition of emotional and non-emotional biological movements in children with severe and profound deafness. Twenty-four deaf children, together with 24 control children matched on mental age and 24 control children matched on chronological age, were asked to identify a person's actions, subjective states,…

Instant-messaging software was used as a method to promote development of argumentation skills in middle schoolers. Transfer of skills across content domains was the major question investigated. Forty sixth graders engaged in electronic dialogues with peers on a controversial topic--for half a science topic (dinosaur extinction) and for half a…

In this study the authors investigated whether training preschool children in the use of mental state lexicon plays a significant role in bringing about advanced conceptual understanding of mental terms and improved performance on theory-of-mind tasks. A total of 70 participants belonging to two age groups (3 and 4 years old) were randomly…

Microgenetic methods were used to document young children's (N = 36; M age = 3;5) acquisition of false belief (FB) understanding and investigate developmental mechanisms. A control group received no experience with FB; 2 other groups received microgenetic sessions designed to promote FB understanding. Over consecutive weeks, microgenetic groups…