This longitudinal study examined age- and gender-related differences in autobiographical memory about the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns and whether the content of these memories predicted psychological adjustment over time. A sample of 247 students (M[subscript age] = 11.94, range 8-16 years, 51.4% female, 85.4% White) was recruited from public and…

Little is known about how children's value priorities develop over time. This study identifies children's value priority profiles and follows their development during middle childhood. Australian children (N = 609; ages 5-12 at Time 1) reported their values over 2 years. Latent Transition Analysis indicated four profiles: Social-Focus, Self-Focus,…

Distractibility is the propensity to behaviorally react to irrelevant information. Although children are more distractible the younger they are, the precise contribution of attentional and motor components to distractibility and their developmental trajectories have not been characterized yet. We used a new behavioral paradigm to identify the…

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…

Group membership is a strong driver of everyday life in humans, influencing similarity judgments, trust choices, and learning processes. However, its ontogenetic development remains to be understood. This study investigated how group membership, age, sex, and identification with a team influenced 39- to 60-month-old children (N = 94) in a series…

Adults exhibit strong preferences when framing symmetrical relations. Adults prefer, for example, "A zebra is like a horse" to "A horse is like a zebra," and "The bicycle is near the building" to "The building is near the bicycle." This is because directional syntax requires more typical or prominent items…

A double-blind randomized controlled trial of n-3 long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acid (n-3 LCPUFA) supplementation or matching placebo during third trimester of pregnancy was conducted within the COPSAC[subscript 2010] mother-child cohort consisting of 736 women and their children. The objective was to determine if maternal n-3 LCPUFA pregnancy…

This meta-analysis, spanning 5 decades of Draw-A-Scientist studies, examined U.S. children's gender-science stereotypes linking science with men. These stereotypes should have weakened over time because women's representation in science has risen substantially in the United States, and mass media increasingly depict female scientists. Based on 78…

Place value notation is essential to mathematics learning. This study examined young children's (4-to 6-year-olds, N = 172) understanding of place value prior to explicit schooling by asking them write spoken numbers (e.g., "six hundred and forty-two"). Children's attempts often consisted of "expansions" in which the proper…

This study examined children's expectancies about interactions with own- and other-gender peers. Goals were to examine expectancies about the outcomes related to own- versus other-gender group interactions, assess cohort and temporal changes in expectancies, and assess the effect of expectancies on school-related outcomes. Students in second and…

Two studies (conducted in 2013) examined whether elementary-aged children endorse a within-gender stereotype about sexualized girls. In Study 1, children (N = 208) ages 6-11 rated sexualized girls as more popular but less intelligent, athletic, and nice compared to nonsexualized girls. These distinctions were stronger for girls and older children,…

This study employs the Specificity Principle to examine the relative impacts of external (input quantity at home and at school, number of books and reading frequency at home, teachers' degree and experience, language usage, socioeconomic status) and internal factors (children's working memory, nonverbal intelligence, learning-related…

It has been argued that children who possess an advanced theory of mind (ToM) are viewed positively by their peers, but the empirical findings are mixed. This meta-analysis of 20 studies including 2,096 children (aged from 2 years, 8 months to 10 years) revealed a significant overall association (r = 0.19) indicating that children with higher ToM…

This multiwave longitudinal study tested two quantitative genetic developmental models to examine genetic and environmental influences on exposure to negative dependent and independent life events. Participants (N = 457 twin pairs) completed measures of life events annually from ages 9 to 16. The same genetic factors influenced exposure to…

To assess the flexibility of reasoning about gender, children ages 4, 6, and 8 years (N = 72) were interviewed about gender norms when different domains were highlighted. The majority of participants at all ages judged a reversal of gender norms in a different cultural context to be acceptable. They also judged gender norms as a matter of personal…