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…

This study aimed to explore the possible indirect pathway between maternal reminiscing style and child socioemotional functioning (prosocial behaviors and emotional adjustment difficulties) through children's autobiographical memory (elaboration and specificity). A secondary exploratory aim was to examine whether cultural context moderated these…

Developmental changes in self-regulation are theorized to underlie adolescents' engagement in risky behaviors, physical health, mental health, and transition to adulthood. Two central processes involved in self-regulation, self-management (i.e. planning, concentration, and problem-solving) and disinhibition (e.g. distractibility and impulsivity)…

Research has shown links between parent-child emotion reminiscing and socio-emotional outcomes, yet little research has investigated why parents talk about emotions with their children and how this relates to children's development. The purpose of this study was to explore how parents' self-reported goals and observed behavior in emotion…

The current study examined children's spontaneous private speech during the vertical and the horizontal Tube Task to shed light on the cognitive, motivational, and emotional processes underlying tool innovation. Tool innovation is defined as solving a novel problem by using or modifying objects in a new and useful way without prior instructions.…

In the current study, we investigated the relations among maternal emotion socialization practices and children's inhibitory control (IC) performance in Chinese and European American families. Fifty-three Chinese (Mage = 60 months) and 52 European American (Mage = 50 months) children and their mothers participated in this study. Maternal emotion…

Despite extant evidence of negative peer treatment of transgender adolescents and adults, little is known about how young children perceive transgender peers, particularly those who have socially transitioned or are living in line with their gender rather than sex at birth. Whereas children have been shown to be averse to gender nonconformity in…

Two studies investigated children's and their parents' reasoning about their mental and bodily states during the time prior to biological conception--"preexistence." Prior research has suggested that, in the absence of a religious script, children display untutored intuitions that they existed as largely disembodied emotional beings…

Two studies examined inferences drawn about the protagonist's emotional state in movies (Study 1) or audiobooks (Study 2). Children aged 5, 8, and 10 years old and adults took part. Participants saw or heard 20 movie scenes or sections of audiobooks taken or adapted from the TV show Lassie. An online measure of emotional inference was designed…

In everyday life, we use folk theories about the mind and behavior to understand ourselves and others. An important part of our folk theory of mind is our intuitions about the role of the self in mental functioning--namely, whether the self is able to control each mental operation. The current study explored beliefs about the nature of control…

Recent research has established that contrast can exert a powerful effect on early word learning. This study examined the role of contrast in young children's ability to learn proper names. Preschoolers heard a novel word for an unfamiliar stuffed animal in the presence of a second stuffed animal of either the same or a different kind.…

In the current research, we examined whether the Affect Misattribution Procedure (AMP) could be successfully adapted as an implicit measure of children's attitudes. We tested this possibility in 3 studies with 5- to 10-year-old children. In Study 1, we found evidence that children misattribute affect elicited by attitudinally positive (e.g., cute…

The day-night paradigm, where children respond to a pair of pictures with opposite labels for a series of trials, is a widely used measure of interference control. Recent research has shown that a happy-sad variant of the day-night task was significantly more difficult than the standard day-night task. The present research examined whether the…

Recent studies suggest that there appears to be a similar developmental sequence in the understanding of mental states in both internal-state language and in standard theory-of-mind tasks. These findings suggest possible developmental relations between children's ability to talk and think about the mind. Two experiments investigated the concurrent…

The aim of this study was to examine associations between children's temperament, parent-child goodness-of-fit, and the emotional content of parent-child conversations about past events. Fifty one New Zealand 5- and 6-year-old children and their parents discussed 4 emotional past events. Parents rated children's temperament along 15 dimensions…