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…

This research investigates positive future expectancies, particularly hope in children, which is comprised of agency thinking, perceiving oneself as capable of achieving goals, and pathways thinking, perceiving oneself as capable of discovering methods toward the desired goals. Two studies (n = 82) were conducted in the United States to examine…

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…

Children's ability to save emerges during the preschool years, but little is known about the different forms saving takes (and whether these relate) and the mechanisms driving its development. Because research with adults suggests that different aspects of future orientation increase adults' propensity to save, we explored whether, in a sample of…

Children hold rich essentialist beliefs about natural and social categories, representing them as discrete (mutually exclusive with sharp boundaries) and stable (with membership remaining constant over an individual's lifespan). Children use essential categories to make inductive inferences about individuals. How do children determine what…

Eighty-six 4- and 5-year-old children were assigned to one of four conditions, three experimental conditions, in which children read a story about a famous scientist, and one baseline condition. In the "Achievement" condition: the scientist was described as receiving awards and recognition through their lifetime, with no discussion of…

Beginning early in life, children are exposed to people who differ in social status. In five studies, we investigate whether 3- to 6-year-old children recognize different dimensions of status (i.e., wealth, physical dominance, decision-making power, and prestige) and use these dimensions to inform their social judgments (preferences and resource…

All societies have resource inequality, wherein some possess more resources than others. How should one respond to such inequality? We tested how children 4-13 years (N= 298) balance concerns about equity and ownership rights, when the two are at odds, in both individual (Study 1) and group (Study 2) contexts. Across these studies, children…

Pretend play is common in childhood. Yet by age 4, children shown pretend and real activities in a book said they would choose to do the real activity over the pretend one. The present studies extended this research, examining children's actual behavior in laboratory and school settings (Study 1, n = 32, M = 59.32 months; and Study 2, n = 16, M…

Two studies investigated children's and their parents' reasoning about their mental and bodily states during the time prior to biological conception--"preexistence." Prior research has suggested that, in the absence of a religious script, children display untutored intuitions that they existed as largely disembodied emotional beings…

Adults conceptualize God as particularly knowledgeable -- more knowledgeable than humans -- about moral transgressions. We investigated how younger (4- to 5-year-old) and older (6- to 7-year-old) children view God's moral knowledge. Cultural narratives in the United States portray God as omniscient, which could lead children growing up in the…

This research examined whether children's construals of mathematical manipulatives -- as toys or as tools for doing mathematics -- influenced their learning from a lesson with the manipulatives. Children (grades 2 and 3) were presented with a set of buckets and beanbags, and they were either given no information about the manipulatives (control)…

This study is a collaborative project between university researchers and museum practitioners investigating ways to advance STEM learning opportunities for young children and their families in museums. The focus of the work is on how the knowledge resources that are available to families (e.g., prior knowledge, information provided by the museum…