We investigated 7- to 10-year-old children's productive extension of semantic memory through self-generation of new factual knowledge derived through integration of separate yet related facts learned through instruction or through reading. In Experiment 1, an experimenter read the to-be-integrated facts. Children successfully learned and…

This article presents an innovative method for capturing the content of adolescents' electronic communication on handheld devices: text messaging, e-mail, and instant messaging. In an ongoing longitudinal study, adolescents were provided with BlackBerry devices with service plans paid for by the investigators, and use of text messaging was…

The present investigation examined 8- to 16-year-olds' tendency to lie, the sophistication of their lies, and related cognitive factors. Participants were left alone and asked not to look at the answers to a test, but the majority peeked. The researcher then asked a series of questions to examine whether the participants would lie about their…

Immigrant-origin adolescents represent the fastest growing segment of youth population in the United States, and in many urban schools they represent the majority of students. In this 3-wave longitudinal study, we explored trajectories of internalizing mental health symptoms (depression, anxiety, and somatic symptoms). The participants included…

This research examined the role of mothers' mindsets about the malleability of children's ability in the quality of their involvement in children's learning. Mothers (N = 79) of early elementary school children (mean age = 7.65 years) were induced to hold either an entity mindset, in which children's ability is seen as unchangeable, or an…

In the current study, based on a sample of 1,873 adolescents between 11.4 and 20.9 years of age from the first 3 waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we investigated the longitudinal effects of future orientation on levels of and developmental changes in problem behaviors, while controlling for the effects by impulsivity;…

Do children and adults use the same cues to judge whether someone is a reliable source of information? In 4 experiments, we investigated whether children (ages 5 and 6) and adults used information regarding accuracy, confidence, and calibration (i.e., how well an informant's confidence predicts the likelihood of being correct) to judge informants'…

An intriguing error has been observed in toddlers presented with a 3-location search task involving invisible displacements of an object, namely, the C-not-B task. In 3 experiments, the authors investigated the dynamics of the attentional focus process that is suspected to be involved in this task. In Experiment 1, 2.5-year-old children were…

The way children evaluate the reporting of peers' transgressions to authority figures was investigated. Participants, ages 6-11 years (N = 60), were presented with a series of vignettes, each of which depicted a child who committed either a minor transgression (such as not finishing the vegetables at lunch) or a more serious transgression (such as…

Two experiments were reported that aimed at investigating the development of spatial analysis of hierarchical patterns in children between 3 and 9 years of age. A total of 108 children participated in the drawing experiment, and 224 children were tested in a force-choice similarity judgment task. In both tasks, participants were exposed to…