Little is known about how children's value priorities develop over time. This study identifies children's value priority profiles and follows their development during middle childhood. Australian children (N = 609; ages 5-12 at Time 1) reported their values over 2 years. Latent Transition Analysis indicated four profiles: Social-Focus, Self-Focus,…

This study investigated the changing relation between emotion and inhibitory control during adolescence. One hundred participants between 11 and 25 years of age performed a go-nogo task in which task-relevant stimuli (letters) were presented at the center of large task-irrelevant images depicting negative, positive, or neutral scenes selected from…

Children (n = 130; M[subscript age] = 8.51-15.68 years) and college-aged adults (n = 72; M[subscript age] = 20.50 years) completed numerosity discrimination and lexical decision tasks. Children produced longer response times (RTs) than adults. R. Ratcliff's (1978) diffusion model, which divides processing into components (e.g., quality of…

Speech productions of 40 English- and 40 Japanese-speaking children (aged 2-5) were examined and compared with the speech produced by 20 adult speakers (10 speakers per language). Participants were recorded while repeating words that began with "s" and "sh" sounds. Clear language-specific patterns in adults' speech were found,…

The contribution of intentionality understanding to symbolic development was examined. Actors added colored dots to a map, displaying either symbolic or aesthetic intentions. In Study 1, most children (5-6 years) understood actors' intentions, but when asked which graphic would help find hidden objects, most selected the incorrect (aesthetic) one…

Three experiments explored the significance of deontic properties (involving rights and obligations) in representations of social categories. Preschool-aged children (M = 4.8), young school-aged children (M = 8.2), and adults judged the centrality of behavioral, psychological, and deontic properties for both familiar (Experiments 1 and 2, Ns = 50…

Examined changes in cortisol and behavioral responses in 83 infants. Found that salivary cortisol responses before and after inoculation were high at 2 months, decreased between 2 and 4 months, remained stable, then declined again between 6 and 15 months. Found some evidence that emergence of circadian rhythm in cortisol might be related to early…

Children at 12, 18, 24, and 30 months of age were observed in same-age, same-sex dyads while they attempted to solve a simple cooperation problem. Each child was given an elicited imitation task that was used to index decentration. Although no dyad of 12 month olds could cooperate, 24 and 30 month olds could coordinate behavior quickly and…

Studies investigated the development of children's ability to differentiate what they see from what they know in the context of conceptual perspective taking. Two developmental levels accounted for children's performance when they were asked about a naive observer's knowledge of the identity of objects. Perspective awareness training improved…

Results indicated that the more frequently the children studied expressed emotion, the older the age of language achievements; and the more time spent in neutral affect, the younger the age of language achievements. (PCB)

Three studies investigated the degree to which young children understand that the acquisition of certain types of knowledge depends on the modality of the sensory experience involved. Results suggest that an appreciation of the different types of knowledge our senses can provide develops between the ages of three and five years. (GLR)

In this study of the distinction between temporal distance and location, children were asked to judge the relative recency and time of target events that occurred one and seven weeks before testing. All judged recency and localized time of day correctly. Six- and eight- but not four-year olds localized longer time scales. (BC)

Results suggest that the most adaptive course of action for children may be to be responsive to environmental demands and interpersonal constraints. In the study, the patterns of compliance of 31 children of 18 months, 32 children of 24 months, and 36 children of 30 months, and their mothers and fathers were observed in five situations. (RH)

Finds support for the global trend hypothesis which posits that cognitive processing speed changes as a function of age and all component processes change at the same rate. (PCB)

Two studies tested whether 12- and 24-month olds' self-knowledge differed from their knowledge of others (mother or inanimate object), or whether toddlers' knowledge of persons (self and mother) differed from knowledge of objects. Results showed that 12-month olds were more sensitive than older toddlers to perceptual features of objects. Data were…