Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) refers to the process through which individuals learn and apply social, emotional, behavioral, and character skills required to succeed in schooling, the workplace, relationships, and citizenship. In public discussion of SEL, not everyone can quite agree on what it is. To some, it involves a set of tools for…

This study is a randomized control trial of full- versus half-day pre-kindergarten in a school district near Denver, Colorado. Four-year-old children were randomly assigned an offer of half-day (four days/week) or full-day (five days/week) pre-k that increased class time by over 600 hours. The offer of full-day pre-k produced substantial, positive…

In spoken languages, children acquire locative terms in a cross-linguistically stable order. Terms similar in meaning to in and on emerge earlier than those similar to "front" and "behind," followed by "left" and "right." This order has been attributed to the complexity of the relations expressed by…

Ageing is associated with elevated pure-tone thresholds, accompanied by increased difficulties in understanding speech-in-noise. While amplification provides important, but insufficient support, auditory-cognitive training (ACT) might propose a solution. However, generalized effects have been scarce, highlighting the necessity of training designs…

To understand the achievement gaps that persist in our schools despite years of equity initiatives, we must look to the insidious legacy of segregated schools and the deliberate underdevelopment of diverse students' cognitive abilities. Uprooting this "cognitive redlining" requires we reimagine instruction for our most vulnerable…

In uncertain situations, individuals rely on prior experiences of successes and failures to guide future decisions. Research has shown that children exposed to early adversity, such as abuse, can exhibit atypical behaviours in probabilistic learning tasks compared to peers without such experiences, which may have long-term behavioural…

The promotion of social, emotional, and academic learning is not a shifting educational fad; it is the substance of education itself. It is not a distraction from the "real work" of math and English instruction; it is how instruction can succeed. And it is not another reason for political polarization. It brings together a traditionally…

Teachers' own level of human capital development is commonly believed to be deterministic for the quality and effectiveness of their instruction and management in the classroom. Yet, there still exists an international debate on whether better educated teachers contribute to students' cognitive development. Leveraging a random class-assignment…

Jigsaw puzzles are ubiquitous developmental toys in Western societies, used here to examine the development of metarepresentation. For jigsaw puzzles this entails understanding that individual pieces, when assembled, produce a picture. In Experiment 1, 3- to 5-year-olds (N = 117) completed jigsaw puzzles that were normal, had no picture, or…

Memory for the temporal order of past events is a critical capacity; however, relatively little is known about its development and the processes that support it in early to middle childhood. The aim of this study was to examine children's memory for the temporal order of real-world events. Four-five-year-old (n = 36), 6-7-year-old (n = 45) and…

The recent proliferation of research on children's supernatural concepts is noteworthy, as this work is necessary for a full account of human cognition. Despite this advancement in our field, there is a lingering tendency for scholars to exotify supernatural concepts; to treat them as distinct or special. Arguments have been raised that these…

The ability to consider multiple possibilities forms the basis for a wide variety of human-unique cognitive capacities. When does this skill develop? Previous studies have narrowly focused on children's ability to prepare for incompatible future outcomes. Here, we investigate this capacity in a causal learning context. Adults (N = 109) and 18- to…

Cognitive development is often characterized in terms of discontinuities, but these discontinuities can sometimes be apparent rather than actual and can arise from continuous developmental change. To explore this idea, we use as a case study the finding by Stager and Werker (1997) that children's early ability to distinguish similar sounds does…

Pediatric sleep deficits represent a prevalent, albeit remediable, problem for school-age individuals (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2017). Estimates of pediatric sleep deficits are variable, however the proportion of individuals exhibiting and reporting these deficits have shown an upward trajectory over the past 20 years, ranging…

Psychosocial intervention programs are carried out in Latin American communities with socioeconomic disadvantage to improve their quality of life; few evaluations are carried out to measure their effectiveness. The study aimed to determine if intervention processes in vulnerable communities might favor the children's development. An analysis of…