U-shaped developmental functions, and their N-shaped cousins, have intrigued developmental psychologists for decades because they provide a compelling demonstration that development does not always entail a monotonic increase across age in a single underlying ability. Instead, the causes of development are much more complex. Indeed,…

This article reports 2 experiments examining the changing role of iconicity in symbol learning and its implications regarding the mechanisms supporting symbol-to-referent mapping. Experiment 1 compared 18- and 26-month-olds' mapping of iconic gestures (e.g., hopping gesture for a rabbit) vs. arbitrary gestures (e.g., dropping motion for a rabbit).…

Background: Deficits in autism have been characterised as a bias towards local over global processing. This paper examines whether there is a deficit in gestalt grouping in autism. Method: Twenty-five low-functioning children with autism and 25 controls who were matched for chronological age and verbal mental age took part in the study. Results:…

While very young children's understanding of objects as symbols for other entities has been the focus of much investigation, very little is known concerning the emergence of comprehension for symbolic relations among actions modeled with toy replicas and their real counterparts. We used videotaped depictions of real actions in a preferential…

Children's developing competence with symbolic representations was assessed in 3 studies. Study 1 examined the hypothesis that the production of imaginary symbolic objects in pantomime requires the simultaneous coordination of the dual representations of a dynamic action and a symbolic object. We explored this coordination of symbolic…

A modified elicited imitation task was used to examine the development of the ability to resist and overcome interference in the 2nd and 3rd years of life. In the modified task, distractor props were included in the test array, so that children could imitate the modeled sequence but could also produce actions with the additional props provided,…

Although a considerable amount is known about the development of object manipulation during the 1st year, less is known about how infants manually explore surfaces and relate objects to surfaces. To address these issues, 60 infants (20 each at 6, 8, and 10 months of age) were presented hard and soft objects on tabletop surfaces, which varied in…

Objective: The present project examined the relationships among early maternal maltreatment risk, children's self-regulation, and later development. It was expected that early maltreatment risk would impact children's emerging self-regulation which in turn, would foster pre-academic delays and behavioral problems. Method: The project used…

Young children's views are heard rarely in public debates and are often subordinated to adults' views. This article examines how early childhood staff could support and enhance young children's participation in public decision making. We argue that when early childhood staff use their expertise in young children's physical, social and cognitive…

Few studies of parenting have considered the possibility that the association between one parent's supportive parenting and a child's early cognition is moderated by the other parent's supportiveness. We test this proposition using a low-income sample of coresident couples. In addition, we cross-classify parents within couples according to their…

Concern exists that a constellation of negative maternal emotions during pregnancy generates persistent negative consequences for child development. Maternal reports of anxiety, pregnancy-specific and nonspecific stress, and depressive symptoms were collected during mid-pregnancy and at 6 weeks and 24 months after birth in a sample of healthy…

Factors affecting performance on base-10 tasks were investigated in a series of four studies with a total of 453 children aged 5-7 years. Training in counting-on was found to enhance child performance on base-10 tasks (Studies 2, 3, and 4), while prior knowledge of counting-on (Study 1), trading (Studies 1 and 3), and partitioning (Studies 1 and…

This article presents an adaptation of the keynote address Steve Silvern delivered at the 2006 ACEI Annual International Conference and Exhibition in San Antonio, Texas. In his address, Silvern observes how educators seldom educate children "wholly." No one ever includes spirit when talking about the whole child, probably because spirit…

Some studies of young children's understanding of false belief have generated controversy, even to the extent that others' failure to replicate these studies was viewed as problematic. A Vygotskian perspective on internalization enables researchers to reverse the classic developmental competence-performance distinction, and to argue that the…

This paper discusses a theory of the formation of social stereotyping and prejudice in children. This intergroup-developmental theory of prejudice has three primary goals: to account for the development of stereotyping and prejudice across multiple domains; to provide a developmental account of social stereotyping, outlining how developmental…