Children's ability to recognize object shape is foundational for successful early word learning. However, the prototypical shape of objects may not be easily accessible--take margarita glasses, for instance. The current study examined 304 U.S. children 17- to 42-month-old (152 females) from 2017 to 2020, asking how shape, age, and vocabulary…

Previous work indicates mutual exclusivity in word learning in monolingual, but not bilingual toddlers. We asked whether this difference indicates distinct conceptual biases, or instead reflects best-guess heuristic use in the absence of context. We altered word-learning contexts by manipulating whether a familiar- or unfamiliar-race speaker…

Social contexts shape the development of attention; however, little is known about joint attention beyond infancy. This study employed behavioral and eye-tracking measurements to investigate cultural variations in how caregivers direct 3- to 4-year-old children's attention and subsequent changes in children's attention to objects and contextual…

This study examined the associations between classmates' reading-related gender stereotypes and students' reading self-efficacy, self-concept, motivation, and achievement. Our sample consisted of 1,508 fifth-grade students (49% girls; age: 10.89 years); data were collected at two time points. Multilevel analyses yielded two main results: First,…

The present longitudinal study examined how and why classroom-level victimization moderates the prospective association between peer victimization and depressive symptoms with 2,643 third- and fourth-graders (M[subscript age] = 10.01 years) in China. Multilevel modeling revealed that peer victimization was more strongly associated with increasing…

Everyday activities are replete with contextual cues for infants to exploit in the service of learning words. Nelson's (1985) script theory guided the hypothesis that infants participate in a set of predictable activities over the course of a day that provide them with opportunities to hear unique language functions and forms. Mothers and their…

Prior research has investigated the relation between children's language and spatial cognition by assessing the quantity of children's spatial word production, with limited attention to the context in which children use such words. This study tested whether 4-year-olds children's (N = 41, primarily white middle class) adaptive use of task-relevant…

Cultural transmission is often viewed as a domain-general process. However, a growing literature suggests that learnability is influenced by content and context. The idea of a learnability landscape is introduced as a way of representing the effects of interacting factors on how easily information is acquired. Extending prior work (Barrett &…