Perceptual narrowing in the visual, auditory, and multisensory domains has its developmental origins during infancy. The current study shows that experimentally induced experience can reverse the effects of perceptual narrowing on infants' visual recognition memory of other-race faces. Caucasian 8- to 10-month-olds who could not discriminate…

In this study, we addressed the question of the nature of the information needed by 13-month-old infants to understand another agent's intentions. In two experiments, an experimenter was either unable or unwilling to give a toy to an infant. Importantly, an implement (a gutter in which the toy could roll down toward the infant) was used to make…

We report a study that addressed behavior data recording by direct-care staff at a child services program. In response to a decreasing percentage of daily data recording in two community-based group homes, a supervisory intervention was implemented, consisting of a revised data recording form and providing performance feedback to the direct-care…

Two experiments examined conditional discrimination in 4- to 6-year-olds. Children learned to choose one of two objects (e.g., circle) when the background was, say, red and to choose the other object (e.g., triangle) when the background was, say, blue. Awareness was assessed and interpreted as a marker of relational processing. In Experiment 1,…

Over-imitation, which is common in children, is the imitation of elements of an action sequence that are clearly unnecessary for reaching the final goal. A variety of cognitive mechanisms have been proposed to explain this phenomenon. Here, 48 3- and 5-year-olds together with a puppet observed an adult demonstrate instrumental tasks that included…

Studies of adults with depression point to characteristic neurocognitive deficits, including differences in processing facial expressions. Few studies have examined face processing in juvenile depression, or taken account of other comorbid disorders. Three groups were compared: depressed children and adolescents with conduct disorder (n = 23),…

Cognitive biases are of interest in understanding the development of anxiety disorders. They also play a significant role during psychotherapy, where cognitive biases are modified in order to break the vicious cycle responsible for maintaining anxiety disorders. In a previous study, the vigilance-avoidance pattern was shown in children with…

Background: Substantial evidence suggests that a Five-Factor Model personality assessment generates a valid description of childhood individual differences and relates to a range of psychological outcomes. Less is known, however, about naturally occurring profiles of personality and their links to psychopathology. The current study explores…

To chart the developmental path of children's attribution of pride to others, we presented children (4 years 0 month to 11 years 11 months of age, N = 108) with video clips of head-and-face, body posture, and multi-cue (both head-and-face and body posture simultaneously) expressions that adults consider to convey pride. Across age groups, 4- and…

Decisions can be made by applying a variety of decision-making rules--sequential rules in which decisions are based on a sequential evaluation of choice dimensions and the integrative normative rule in which decisions are based on an integration of choice dimensions. In this study, we investigated the developmental trajectory of such…

States and jurisdictions are under increased pressure to demonstrate the use of evidence-based treatments (EBTs) for children's mental health, increasing the demand for a workforce trained in these practices. Universities are a critical pipeline for this workforce. This article describes the genesis and evolution of a university-based initiative…

The purpose of the current study was to analyse the pre service teachers training programs for the distance learners of Allama Iqbal Open University (AIOU) Islamabad, Pakistan. This kind of training is provided to the future teachers enrolled to acquire pre service training to become a teacher in a Government educational institution in Pakistan.…

Much recent evidence shows that preschoolers are sensitive to the accuracy of an informant. Faced with two informants, one of whom names familiar objects accurately and the other inaccurately, preschoolers subsequently prefer to learn the names and functions of unfamiliar objects from the more accurate informant. This study examined the inference…

To address the question of whether young children are differentially sensitive to referential opacity, an advanced Theory of Mind skill, we assessed 4-, 6-, and 8-year-olds on three types of opaque contexts: epistemic, quotational, and intentional. Children's performance improved as a function of age and varied significantly by opacity type.…

Individual differences in behavioral regulation system (BRS) and stress response system (SRS) functioning may reflect greater biological sensitivity to context. The current study tested whether children's cortisol, a measure of the SRS, was related to observed dysregulated behavior, an indicator of the BRS, in a sample of children admitted for…