The constructive episodic simulation hypothesis suggests that we imagine possible future events by flexibly recombining details of past experiences to produce novel scenarios. Here we tested this hypothesis by determining whether episodic future thinking is related to relational memory ability during the preschool years. Children (3- to…

Category-based reasoning is central to mature cognition; however, the developmental course of this ability remains contested. One strong indicator of category-based reasoning is the propensity to make inferences based on semantically similar labels. Recent evidence indicates that in preschool-age children the effects of semantically similar labels…

The goal of this research was to investigate the extent to which young children use the past reliability of another person's statements to make inferences about the accuracy of that person's claims about a hidden toy. When children interacted with a previously reliable speaker, both 30- and 36-month-olds searched in the new location of the toy, in…

Inductive generalization of novel properties to same-category or similar-looking objects was studied in Chinese preschool children. The effects of category labels on generalizations were investigated by comparing basic-level labels, superordinate-level labels, and a control phrase applied to three kinds of stimulus materials: colored photographs…

The current research compared the ability of adults and children to determine where another person is looking in shared visual space (triadic gaze). In Experiment 1, children (6-, 8-, 10-, and 14-year-olds) and adults viewed photographs of a model fixating a series of positions separated by 1.6 degrees along the horizontal plane. The task was to…

Much recent evidence shows that preschoolers are sensitive to the accuracy of an informant. Faced with two informants, one of whom names familiar objects accurately and the other inaccurately, preschoolers subsequently prefer to learn the names and functions of unfamiliar objects from the more accurate informant. This study examined the inference…

Inferences about emotions in children are limited by studies that rely on only one research method. Convergence across methods provides a stronger basis for inference by identifying method variance. This multimethod study of 116 children (mean age = 8.21 years) examined emotional displays during social exchange. Each child received a desirable…

Two experiments tested whether 4- and 5-year-olds follow the rule "ignorance means you get it wrong." Following this rule should lead children to infer that a character who is ignorant about some situation will also have a false belief about it. This rule should sometimes lead children into error because ignorance does not imply false belief. In…

We present evidence suggesting that the effect of self-explanations on learning is not always beneficial and, in fact, in some contexts has a detrimental effect. Over eight sessions, fourth-graders engaged in investigation of a database with the goal of identifying causal effects. In a separate task, children in one condition also generated…

Developmental studies have provided mixed evidence with regard to the question of whether children consider sample size and sample diversity in their inductive generalizations. Results from four experiments with 105 undergraduates, 105 school-age children (M = 7.2 years), and 105 preschoolers (M = 4.9 years) showed that preschoolers made a higher…

Illustrations are a salient source of information in children's books, yet their effect on children's reading comprehension has been studied only through literal factual recall. The purpose of the current study was to determine the effect of illustrations on bridging inferences, an important aspect of meaning making in comprehension models.…

Body language and facial gesture provide sufficient visual information to support high-level social inferences from "thin slices" of behavior. Given short movies of nonverbal behavior, adults make reliable judgments in a large number of tasks. Here we find that the high precision of adults' nonverbal social perception depends on the slow…

Recently, Thibault and colleagues described the Duchenne marker as a cultural dialect for the perception of smile authenticity. The current study had the goal to follow up on this finding and to investigate the cues that French Canadian children use to evaluate the authenticity of smiles from members of three ethnic groups. The authenticity of six…

This study examined how rumors originating in 3- to 6-year-olds' causal inferences can affect their own and their peers' memories for a personally experienced event. This was accomplished by exposing some members of classrooms to contextual clues that were designed to induce inferences about the causes of two unresolved components of the event.…

When children hear an object referred to with a label that is moderately discrepant from its appearance, they frequently make inferences about that object consistent with the label rather than its appearance. We asked whether 3-year-olds actually believe these unexpected labels (i.e., conversion) or whether their inferences simply reflect a desire…