The meaning, mechanism, and function of imitation in early infancy have been actively discussed since Meltzoff and Moore's (1977) report of facial and manual imitation by human neonates. Oostenbroek et al. (2016) claim to challenge the existence of early imitation and to counter all interpretations so far offered. Such claims, if true, would have…

The integrated theory of numerical development posits that a central theme of numerical development from infancy to adulthood is progressive broadening of the types and ranges of numbers whose magnitudes are accurately represented. The process includes four overlapping trends: (1) representing increasingly precisely the magnitudes of non-symbolic…

A deficit in theory of mind (ToM), or the ability to infer the mental states of others, has been implicated as one of the major characteristics of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD); however, little attention has been devoted to possible differences in ToM ability within ASD. The current study examined ToM performance in children with early-onset…

We used opposing figural aftereffects to investigate whether there are at least partially separable representations of upright and inverted faces in patients who missed early visual experience because of bilateral congenital cataracts (mean age at test 19.5 years). Visually normal adults and 10-year-olds were tested for comparison. Adults showed…

Happe and Loth (2002) describe word learning as a "privileged domain" in the development of a theory of mind. We test this claim in a series of experiments based on the Sally-Anne paradigm. Three- and 4-year-old children's ability to represent others' false beliefs was investigated in tasks that required the child either to predict the actions of…

The ability to keep information active in working memory is one of the cornerstones of cognitive development. Prior studies have demonstrated that regions which are important for working memory performance in adults, such as dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC), and superior parietal cortex, become…

Studies of brain development suggest that the increase in risk taking observed during adolescence may be due to insufficient prefrontal executive function compared to a more rapidly developing subcortical motivation system. We examined executive function as assessed by working memory ability in a community sample of youth (n = 387, ages 10 to 12…

For adults, prior information about an individual's likely goals, preferences or dispositions plays a powerful role in interpreting ambiguous behavior and predicting and interpreting behavior in novel contexts. Across two studies, we investigated whether 10-month-old infants' ability to identify the goal of an ambiguous action sequence was…

Our objectives were to document and examine socioeconomic gradients across a comprehensive set of child development measures in a population living in extreme poverty, and to interpret these gradients in light of findings from the neuroscience literature. We assessed a nationally representative sample of 3-6-year-old children (n = 1332) from 150…

A number of authors have proposed models of cognitive development that explain improvements in intelligence over the course of childhood via changes in the efficiency of inhibitory processes (Anderson, 2001; Bjorklund & Harnishfeger, 1990; Dempster, 1991, 1992; Dempster & Corkill, 1999a; Harnishfeger, 1995; Harnishfeger & Bjorklund, 1993). A…

Phillips-Silver and Trainor (2005) demonstrated a link between movement and the metrical interpretation of rhythm patterns in 7-month-old infants. Infants bounced on every second beat of a rhythmic pattern with no auditory accents later preferred to listen to an accented version of the pattern with accents every second beat (duple or march meter),…

To investigate the relation between cognitive and affective social understanding, Japanese 4- to 8-year-olds received tasks of first- and second-order false beliefs and prosocial and self-presentational display rules. From 6 to 8 years, children comprehended display rules, as well as second-order false belief, using social pressures justifications…

In their first years, children's understanding of mental states seems to improve dramatically, but the mechanisms underlying these changes are still unclear. Such "theory of mind" (ToM) abilities may arise during development, or have an innate basis, developmental changes reflecting limitations of other abilities involved in ToM tasks (e.g.…

It is thought that a child takes the first 8 years of life to develop an adult-like volitional attention system. The data that support this belief, however, are based on studies that inadvertently measured a combination of volitional and reflexive attention, rather than volitional attention alone. What is immature then in children that are younger…

The aim of the present study was to explore the relationship between cognitive and motor control by correlating individual performance on a variety of complex tasks in a normative sample of over 100 7-year-olds. While there are a few studies including children with specific developmental disorders (i.e. ADHD and DCD) showing that they share…