Australian children aged 6-9 years (N = 120, 71 females; data collected in 2021-2022) were tasked with remembering the locations of 1, 3, 5, and 7 targets hidden under 25 cups on different trials. In the critical test phase, children were provided with a limited number of tokens to allocate across trials, which they could use to mark target…

The ability to use knowledge to guide the completion of goals is a critical cognitive skill, but 3-year-olds struggle to complete goals that require multiple steps. This study asked whether 3-year-olds could benefit from "plan chunking" to complete multistep goals. Thirty-two U.S. children (range = 35.75-46.59 months; 18 girls; 9 white,…

Research with Western samples has uncovered the rapid development of infants' visual attention. This study evaluated spatial attention in 6- to 9-month-old infants living in rural Malawi (N = 511; n[subscript Boys] = 255, n[subscript Yao] = 427) or suburban California, United States (N = 57, n[subscript Boys] = 29, n[subscript White] = 37) in…

Is early reasoning about an agent's knowledge best characterized by a mentalistic stance, a teleological stance, or both? In this research, 5-month-old infants (N = 64, 50% female, 83% White) saw a novel eyeless agent consistently approach object-A as opposed to object-B. Although infants could always see both objects, a screen separated object-B…

Working memory training improves children's cognitive performance on untrained tasks; however, little is known about the underlying neural mechanisms. This was investigated in 32 typically developing children aged 10-14 years (19 girls and 13 boys) using a randomized controlled design and multi-modal magnetic resonance imaging (Devon, UK;…

This study examined how top-down control influenced letter-speech sound (L-SS) learning, the initial phase of learning to read. In 2020, 107 Dutch children (53 boys, M[subscript age] = 106.845 months) learned eight L-SS correspondences, either preceded by goal-directed or implicit instructions. Symbol knowledge and artificial word-reading ability…

In two experiments, one hundred and sixty-two 6- to 8-year-olds were asked to reason counterfactually about events with different causal structures. All events involved overdetermined outcomes in which two different causal events led to the same outcome. In Experiment 1, children heard stories with either an ambiguous causal relation between…

This study took a novel approach to understanding the role of language in spatial development by combining approaches from spatial language and gesture research. It analyzed forty-three 4.5- to 6-year-old's speech and gesture production during explanations of reasoning behind performance on Spatial Analogies and Children's Mental Transformation…

Cognitive effort is costly and this cost likely influences the activities in which children engage. Yet, little is known about how school-age children perceive cognitive effort. The subjective value of cognitive effort, that is, how valuable or costly effort is perceived, was investigated in seventy-three 7- to 12-year-olds using an effort…

This study examined future-oriented behavior in children (3-6 years; N = 193) from three diverse societies--one industrialized Western city and two small, geographically isolated communities. Children had the opportunity to prepare for two alternative versions of an immediate future event over six trials. Some 3-year-olds from all cultures…

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…

This study investigated transfer effects of gaze-interactive attention training to more complex social and cognitive skills in infancy. Seventy 9-month-olds were assigned to a training group (n = 35) or an active control group (n = 35). Before, after, and at 6-week follow-up both groups completed an assessment battery assessing transfer to…

Fundamental to amassing a lexicon of relational terms (i.e., verbs, prepositions) is the ability to abstract and categorize spatial relations such as a figure (e.g., "boy") moving along a path (e.g., "around" the barn). Three studies examine how infants learn to categorize path over changes in "manner," or how an action is performed (e.g., running…

Sixty infants divided evenly between 5 and 7 months of age were tested for their knowledge of object continuity versus discontinuity with a predictive tracking task. The stimulus event consisted of a moving ball that was briefly occluded for 20 trials. Both age groups predictively tracked the ball when it disappeared and reappeared via occlusion,…

Cognitive control, the ability to align our actions with goals or context, is largely absent in children under four. How then are preschoolers able to tailor their behavior to best match the situation? Learning may provide an alternative route to context-sensitive responding. This study investigated this hypothesis in the Dimensional Change Card…