Although we cannot see or touch time, across many cultures, we use spatial representations to think about this abstract concept. Spatial representations of time are thought to support temporal concepts that might otherwise be difficult to represent and reason about, such as the temporal component of episodic memory. One common form of spatially…

Striking weight biases emerge early in development, yet cognitive-developmental research has largely ignored weight as a social characteristic of interest. How do children conceive of weight? In particular, do children hold essentialist views of weight (i.e. do they view weight as natural, stable, inductively meaningful, and reflective of people's…

The relationship between motor skills and executive functions (EFs) is gaining prominence in the field of developmental psychology. However, evidence of the motor skills--EFs link in children with typical development is somewhat inconsistent and there has been no adequate attempt to evaluate it systematically across studies. In view of this, the…

Pretend play is an important, universal activity of early childhood, but research to date contains multiple inconsistencies in definitions and measurement of pretend play. To begin to resolve this issue, we conducted a first study of the multiple different behaviors of pretend play in the preschool years (3-5 years), and investigated their…

Children's development of executive function is a good candidate for studying cultural differences because it is a necessary capacity for becoming competent participants in cultural activities, and yet it is also likely to be shaped by culturally organized everyday experiences, with potential consequences for children's development and learning.…

This developmental account of executive function (EF) argues that domain-general analogical processes build a functional hierarchy of skills, which vary on a continuum of abstraction, and become increasingly differentiated over time. The paper begins by showing how a functional hierarchy can capture important aspects of EF development, including…

A growing body of literature has established longitudinal associations between key social cognitive capacities emerging in infancy and children's subsequent theory of mind. However, existing work is limited by modest sample sizes, narrow infant measures, and theory of mind assessments with restricted variability and generalizability. The current…

The majority of the world's children live in low- and middle-income countries, yet the majority of early childhood cognitive research is done with a small proportion of high-income countries. These findings cannot be assumed to apply across all contexts. It is therefore necessary to confront entrenched systems of power and privilege in early…

The development of children's future-oriented cognition has become a popular research topic in the past two decades. Much of this research focuses on the preschool and middle childhood years, but very little is known about the future-oriented cognitive abilities of toddlers and young preschoolers. The present study investigated the emergence of…

As children get older, they become better able to discriminate between impossible and improbable statements and they realize that improbable events can occur in reality while impossible ones cannot. However, when children hear about extraordinary events from fictional entities (e.g., popular characters from children's media), they may be more…

Young children's racial stereotyping is poorly understood even though stereotyping can influence individuals' attitudes and behavior toward others. Here we present two preregistered studies (Total N = 257) examining White American children's (4-8 years) application of six stereotypes (about being American, smart, wealthy, sporty, honest, and nice)…

The early childhood years are critical for developing executive function (EF) and theory of mind (ToM). Prior literature suggests a robust relationship between EF and ToM; however, this relationship has seldom been investigated in children living in poverty. In addition, few studies have employed comprehensive ToM measures to explore how EF…

Executive function (EF) skills are a set of attention-regulation skills involved in intentional, goal-directed behavior that include (but are not limited to) the cool EF skills of working memory, cognitive flexibility, and inhibitory control, and also the hot EF skill of intentional reevaluation. These skills are inevitably expressed in goal- and…

Although laboratory studies have examined the development of children's prospective memory (PM) and the factors that influence its performance, much less is known about children's PM performance and development in their everyday life. The current study used an online parent diary report approach to examine American 2- to 6-year-olds' PM successes…

Our ability to shift from current to alternative (e.g., past and future) perspectives (i.e., "self-projection") plays a fundamental role in accurate decision-making. We investigated 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds' ability to shift perspective to reason about their future and past preferences. In Experiment 1 (N = 96), children were presented…