Recent research has shown that from early in development, children selectively form new beliefs in response to information supplied by others. However, little is known about the development of selective revision of existing beliefs in response to socially conveyed information. Such selective social belief revision has been extensively studied by…

Developing mechanisms for predicting human action is a critical task of early conceptual development. Three studies examined whether 4-year-old children (N = 149) use social allegiances to predict behavior, by testing whether they expect the experiences of social partners to influence individual action. After being exposed to a conflict between…

Associations among sibling teaching strategies, learner behavior, age, age gap, gender, and social-cognitive skills (second-order false-belief and interpretive understanding of knowledge) were investigated in 63 sibling dyads in early and middle childhood. Two teaching tasks were introduced to the older sibling teacher: a teacher-directed task…

Social cognitive skills such as empathy and theory of mind are crucial for everyday interactions, cooperation, and cultural learning, and deficits in these skills have been implicated in pathologies such as autism spectrum disorder, sociopathy, and nonverbal learning disorders. Little research has examined how these skills develop after early…

Interest in U-shaped development has itself undergone a U-shaped progression. Twenty-five years ago, interest in U-shaped development was high. This interest was evident at a 1978 conference in Tel Aviv on "U-shaped Behavioral Growth" that resulted in the publication of a book of the same title 4 years later (Strauss, 1982). The breadth…