Australian children aged 6-9 years (N = 120, 71 females; data collected in 2021-2022) were tasked with remembering the locations of 1, 3, 5, and 7 targets hidden under 25 cups on different trials. In the critical test phase, children were provided with a limited number of tokens to allocate across trials, which they could use to mark target…

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a complex neurodevelopmental condition affecting information processing across domains. The current meta-analysis investigated whether slower processing speed is associated with the ASD neurocognitive profile and whether findings hold across different time-based tasks and stimuli (social vs. nonsocial; linguistic…

As young as 3 years old, children rely on a mutual intentionality framework to confer group membership--that is, agreement between a joiner ("I want to be in your group") and group ("We want you to be in our group"). Here, we tested whether children apply this cognitive framework in the context of identity-based groups,…

Young children often struggle to answer the question "what would have happened?" particularly in cases where the adult-like "correct" answer has the same outcome as the event that actually occurred. Previous work has assumed that children fail because they cannot engage in accurate counterfactual simulations. Children have…

Self-regulation often refers to the executive influence of cognitive resources to alter prepotent responses. The ability to engage cognitive resources as a form of executive process emerges and improves in the preschool-age years while the dominance of prepotent responses, such as emotional reactions, begins to decline from toddlerhood onward.…

This study investigated the development of rapid visual object categorization. N = 20 adults (Experiment 1), N = 21 five to six-year-old children (Experiment 2), and N = 140 four-, seven-, and eleven-month-old infants (Experiment 3; all predominantly White, 81 females, data collected in 2013-2020) participated in a fast periodic visual stimulation…

The architecture of sleep undergoes distinct changes during childhood and early adolescence. Slow wave sleep is involved in memory processing and may support active consolidation of newly encoded representations to support the formation of abstracted "gist" memories. Here, we examined sleep and overnight memory formation in German school…

Cognitive control can be triggered by explicit or implicit events; it has been proposed that these two possibilities tap into dissociable mechanisms. In this study, we investigate this idea by testing whether young children, who struggle with explicitly triggered control, can demonstrate proportion congruency effects--which are based on implicit…

Executive functions (EFs) undergo dramatic changes during preschool years and show differential age-related effects. In view of this, the present study examines the developmental pathways of EF components among Hungarian preschoolers. The study sample consisted of 136 participants aged between 3 and 6 years old, who were assessed using the…

The ability to bind, or link, different aspects of an experience in memory undergoes protracted development across childhood. Most studies of memory binding development have assessed extraobject binding between an object and some external element such as another object, whereas little work has examined the development of intraobject binding, such…

The notion of learning dispositions has extended conceptions of learning in early childhood education to incorporate dimensions such as habits of mind and patterns of behaviour. This paper conceptualizes learning dispositions through a Chinese lens, and with conceptualizing this notion, explores associated pedagogical practices. The data are drawn…

Little is explored regarding the modality-specific differences in recall abilities of preschool children. Understanding modality-specific differences in the recall at an early age might give an insight into age-linked trends, which can lay a foundation for later development. The current study used a cross-sectional design to investigate the…

Perception verbs and mental verbs have significant overlap in their syntax and semantics; both reference mental representations when taking embedded clauses, as in "I see that Maria was here" and "I think that Maria was here." Some have suggested that perception is more accessible for young children than mental states, raising…

This study took a novel approach to understanding the role of language in spatial development by combining approaches from spatial language and gesture research. It analyzed forty-three 4.5- to 6-year-old's speech and gesture production during explanations of reasoning behind performance on Spatial Analogies and Children's Mental Transformation…

There is now wide consensus that the quality of family relationships is involved in the development of child executive functioning (EF), a set of cognitive skills that bear critical importance for social and academic adjustment at school. This body of research has, however, focused almost exclusively on dyadic parent-child interactions and failed…