This study examined young children's deception in a conflict situation. A puppet show was prepared involving a protagonist who went into hiding, an enemy who wanted to catch the protagonist, and a friend who was looking for the protagonist. In the no-conflict condition, the enemy asked the children about the location of the protagonist. In the…

Detecting self-generated actions and imitating other-generated actions are important abilities in order to interact with others. The relationship between these domains was investigated in 6-8-month-old infants. In a contingency-preference task, infants observed their own legs on a real-time and a delayed video display. In an imitation task, the…

With the dramatic recent changes in Chinese society, Chinese college students' average levels of loneliness and social support might also have changed across their birth cohorts. The present cross-temporal meta-analysis of 56 studies (N = 21,541) found that Chinese college students' scores on the UCLA Loneliness Scale (Version 3) increased…

Personal recollections constitute autobiographical memory that develops intensively during the preschool years. The two-wave longitudinal study focuses on gender differences in preschool children's independent recollections. The same children (N = 275; 140 boys, 135 girls) were asked to talk about their previous birthday and the past weekend at…

The first distribution of Chinese infant-mother (n = 61) attachment classifications categorised by trained and reliability-tested coders is reported with statistical comparisons to US norms and previous Chinese distributions. Three-way distribution was 15% insecure-avoidant, 62% secure, 13% insecure-resistant, and 4-way distribution was 13%…

Little is known about the development of children's lying. The present study examined whether observed social and non-social fear in preschoolers predicts children's consistent cheating (N = 460; M = 4.3 years of age) and consistent lying about cheating. When left alone, 155 (34%) children cheated in both games conducted. Of these consistently…

The present study was designed to investigate the impact of familiarity and audience age on children's self-presentation in self-drawings of happy, sad and neutral figures. Two hundred children (100 girls and 100 boys) with the average age of 8 years 2 months, ranging from 6 years 3 months to 10 years 1 month, formed two age groups and five…

Sharing is an important indicator of internalised prosocial values. We examined predictors of sharing of 302 preschoolers with their younger siblings in a one-year longitudinal study. Sharing was observed during different home visits, once with father and once with mother. We examined the following predictors: both children's externalising…

Attachment's role in children's memories of wellbeing and distress was evaluated through the Manchester Child Attachment Story Task in 30 Italian children, aged 6 years (15 secure and 15 insecure). Their mothers' coherence of discourse was determined using the Adult Attachment Interview. A mediation model examining whether children's attachment…

The present study investigated how Chinese children develop theory of mind (ToM) in a language environment with limited mental state talk that is rich in behavior discourse. In Study 1, 60 mothers shared a wordless storybook with their 3-4-year-olds. The children completed two false-belief tasks and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised at…

The study explored how Chinese children spontaneously explained the causes of illness. Two groups of 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old children from different socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds were recruited, with 30 children in each age group. A group of 30 college students were also recruited and their responses compared to those produced by the…

The paper describes a multicentre study of the psychometric properties of the Manchester Child Attachment Story Task in a sample of 230 Italian children aged 4 to 8 years. The task's internal consistency and inter-rater reliability were investigated; in addition, multiple discriminant analysis was used to explore the contribution of individual…

The present study investigated the associations of Korean mothers' attention regulation and referential speech during play with their toddlers' language and play development. The play interaction between mothers (n = 42) and their toddlers aged between 13 and 23 months was videotaped during home visits. Maternal behavior in regulating their…