We investigated the role of distinct inhibitory processes as 4- to 6-year-olds from the Northeastern United States (N = 48, M[subscript age] = 68.27 months, 22 boys, 26 girls; 63% White, 6% Black, 4% Asian, 2% Hispanic, 8% more than one race, with 17% not reporting) and adults evaluated accurate or deceptive information from human or non-human…

Children's understanding of the stability of gender over time has long been recognized as a hallmark of early childhood cognitive development. Prior research has argued that until roughly age 6, children do not understand that a person's gender identity remains consistent if the person undergoes a change in gendered behavior or appearance.…

Recently, there have been calls to build a more inclusive knowledge base of the home numeracy environment (HNE) by diversifying the populations in our descriptive research. Given that Latine children are the fastest-growing population in the U.S. it is of the utmost importance to include Latine families and children in these efforts. The present…

The aim of this study was to summarize evidence about the relations between parent math support in children aged 3-5 years (from several countries in America, Asia, and Europe) and concurrent and longitudinal math outcomes. The (bio)ecological model of human development guided our hypotheses. The design and reporting of this meta-analysis used the…

Superstitious behaviors persist across time, culture, and age. Although often considered irrational and even potentially harmful, superstitions have recently been shown to have positive effects on stress levels, confidence, and ultimately, performance. However, it remains unclear how people conceive of superstitious behaviors, specifically,…

For decades, developmental psychologists and educators have emphasized that learning about counterintuitive phenomena may be a critical driving force for cognitive development. Thus far, little is known about the specific content that children seek to enrich their knowledge. Using a novel book-choice paradigm, we directly examine children's…

Past research has shown that children are more likely to seek out and remember facts about kinds (e.g. "tarsiers hunt for birds") than individuals (e.g. "this tarsier likes to sing"), underscoring the importance of kind-based information in human cognition. However, children also often care about and learn facts about…

Sometimes we should persist to succeed. But other times it might be wiser to give up on the task at hand and focus our energy on something new. Knowing whether a task is worth the effort potentially requires multiple capacities, including sensitivity to one's own likelihood to succeed on the current problem, the associated costs with continuing to…

The study aimed to examine the difference between cheating and persistence during a persistence task to advance persistence measurement. Through a within-subject design (N = 78, mean age: 5.2 years), two different versions of the puzzle box task were administered. The original puzzle box task was administered in condition I (i.e., open version).…

Although we cannot see or touch time, across many cultures, we use spatial representations to think about this abstract concept. Spatial representations of time are thought to support temporal concepts that might otherwise be difficult to represent and reason about, such as the temporal component of episodic memory. One common form of spatially…

Children's storybooks often contain fantasy elements, from dragons and wizards to anthropomorphic animals that wear clothes, talk, and behave like humans. These elements can impact children's learning from storybooks both positively and negatively, perhaps due in part to their ability to capture children's interest and attention. Prior research…

The recent proliferation of research on children's supernatural concepts is noteworthy, as this work is necessary for a full account of human cognition. Despite this advancement in our field, there is a lingering tendency for scholars to exotify supernatural concepts; to treat them as distinct or special. Arguments have been raised that these…

Children's development of executive function is a good candidate for studying cultural differences because it is a necessary capacity for becoming competent participants in cultural activities, and yet it is also likely to be shaped by culturally organized everyday experiences, with potential consequences for children's development and learning.…

Children's early accuracy on place value (PV) tasks longitudinally predicts their later multidigit calculation skills. However, another window into children's emerging base-ten concepts is the pattern of errors -- "smart errors" -- they exhibit on these measures. Past research has speculated that these smart errors -- similar to invented…

Number line estimation (NLE) tasks are widely used to investigate numerical cognition, learning, and development, and as an instructional tool. Interpretation of these tasks generally involves an implicit expectation that responses are driven by the overall magnitudes of target numerals, in the sense that the particular digits conveying those…