Learning to descend stairs requires motor and cognitive capacities on the part of infants and opportunities for practice and assurance of safety offered by caregivers. The American Academy of Pediatrics prescribes the age strategy to teach toddlers to safely descend stairs but without much consideration for individual differences in infants'…

The papers making up this Special Section reveal important findings and begin to fill gaps in existing literature about children's and young people's understanding and developing beliefs about socio-economic inequality and poverty. We draw on our research experience with children growing up in poverty in Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Vietnam (Young…

Naturalistic dyadic sequences of teaching and learning involving older and younger siblings were investigated in 39 middle-class dyads over a 2-year period in early childhood. Siblings were observed during ongoing interactions in the home setting for 6 90-min sessions at both Time 1 (older sibling "M" age = 4.4 years; younger sibling…

A longitudinal study and a training study were conducted to show that simply referring to others facilitated theory of mind (ToM) development in Chinese children. In Study 1, 3- to 4-year-old Chinese children (N = 52) were tested on ToM and autobiographical memory (AM). One year later, in the group of children who initially failed the false belief…

This longitudinal study was designed to (a) examine changes in children's deliberate memory across the 1st grade; (b) characterize the memory-relevant aspects of their classrooms; and (c) explore linkages between the children's performance and the language their teachers use in instruction. To explore contextual factors that may facilitate the…

Ten- and 11-year-old boys and girls were taught to solve Inhelder and Piaget's pendulum problem and the results of the experiment replicated their expectation that unaided 10- and 11-year-olds do not often solve the pendulum problem. (Editor/RK)