Understanding the factors that influence student outcomes is crucial for both parents and schools when designing effective educational strategies. This paper explores the impact of peer age on both cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes using a randomized sample of middle school students. By analyzing how exogenous variations in peer age affect…

The aim of the present research is to assess the developmental pattern of the metacognitive knowledge of attention in Italian primary school students. Data were collected from 95 pupils divided into two age groups: the first (6-8 years) and second primary school cycles (8-10 years). The children were asked to perform two specific thematic drawings…

Adolescence is a period of development in which peer relationships become especially important. A computer-based game (Cyberball) has been used to explore the effects of social exclusion in adolescents and adults. The current functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study used Cyberball to extend prior work to the cross-sectional study of…

Using 20 levels of intensity, we measured children's thresholds to discriminate the six basic emotional expressions from neutral and their misidentification rates. Combined with the results of a previous study using the same method ("Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 102" (2009) 503-521), the results indicate that by 5 years of age,…

Mother-child play of maltreating and nonmaltreating families was analyzed when infants were 12 months old (Time 1), and 2 years old (Time 2), as a context to examine children's developing cognitive and social skills. At Time 1, infants from abusing families demonstrated less independent and more imitative behavior during play than did infants from…

In simple tests of preference, infants as young as newborns prefer faces and face-like stimuli over distractors. Little is known, however, about the development of attention to faces in complex scenes. We recorded eye-movements of 3-, 6-, and 9-month-old infants and adults during free-viewing of clips from "A Charlie Brown Christmas" (an animated…

During individual interviews, each of 64 subjects, aged 8 to 14, generated a peer perception grid in which 17 supplied figures were rated on 10 individually elicited bipolar concepts. Three aspects are examined: attributional characteristics of concepts, level of differentiation between peer figures, and organizational complexity of relations…

Investigates two levels of the spontaneous inference of thinking in others (nonrecursive and recursive) in children of ages 10, 12, 14 and 16 using a person description task. (Author/SS)

Perspectives on reality monitoring and sociocultural learning were integrated in four studies of children's memory of contributions to the outcomes of collaborative exchanges. Findings suggested that reality-monitoring judgments reflect at least two cognitive processes, appropriation and attention to source of information, and may provide clues to…

This paper describes two studies which investigated the development in elementary school children of the ability to derive inferences about the subjective states (physiological and psychological) of others. A cued recall procedure was utilized to assess the relative effectiveness of implicitly or explicitly stated emotional states as cues for…

Piaget's concept of socialized speech was reevaluated with the use of everyday preschool speech collected during free play on 174 boys and girls aged 2 to 5. (MS)

Videorecorded stimuli were used to assess social information processing patterns in 3 domains (peer group entry, response to provocation, and response to authority directive) in 259 first, second, and third graders. Teacher and peer ratings of behavior competence supported the hypothesis that children's behavioral competence is a function of…

The present study attempted to operationalize the constructs of empathy and egocentrism and contrast them with a cognitive explanation of the behavior of children on a task which required "S" to identify the affective state of himself and of others. Forty "Ss," aged 3-5, were presented a series of 23 stories describing an event which had occurred…

This paper describes a one-year longitudinal follow up study of the long term effects of role taking training procedures (in which children assumed a number of perspectives) on children's social and cognitive behaviors. Longitudinal and cross-sectional age effects were also analyzed. In an earlier study the effect of two types of role-taking…

Examines cognitive processing and semantic influences on the developmental patterning of everyday social explanation in a cross-cultural investigation undertaken among American and Hindu adults and children (ages 8, 11, and 15). (HOD)