English-speaking adults often recruit a "mental timeline" to represent events from left-to-right (LR), but its developmental origins are debated. Here, we test whether preschoolers prefer ordered linear representations of events and whether they prefer culturally conventional directions. English-speaking adults (n = 85) and 3- to…

The rapid detection and resolution of conflict between opposing action tendencies is crucial for our ability to engage in goal-directed behavior. Research in adults suggests that emotions can serve as a "relevance detector" that alarms attentional and sensory systems, thereby leading to more efficient conflict processing. In contrast,…

Previous studies suggest that autism spectrum disorders are characterized by alterations in the microbiota-gut-brain axis. Probiotics may modify the composition and the functionality of the gut microbiota of autism spectrum disorder individuals, with possible cascading effects on brain function. In this study, we analyzed possible brain…

Learning requires effort, but children cannot try hard at everything. Here, we evaluated whether children use their improvement over time to decide whether to stick with a challenge. To eliminate the effect of individual differences in ability or prior knowledge, we created a novel paradigm that allowed us to surreptitiously control children's…

The study aims to examine whether the interaction of parents' education and income levels has a significant effect on the creativity scores of preschool children. The research was conducted in a district of Ankara, where parents are thought to vary in terms of income and education level. 123 children studying in independent kindergartens…

Interactions with peers are fundamental to socio-cognitive development, but assessing peer interactions in standardized experiments is challenging. Therefore, researchers commonly utilize puppetry to simulate peers. This Registered Report investigated urban German children's (Age[subscript Range] = 3.5-4.5 years; N = 144; 76[male gender symbol])…

As children gradually master grammatical rules, they often go through a period of producing form-meaning associations that were not observed in the input. For example, 2- to 3-year-old English-learning children use the bare form of verbs in settings that require obligatory past tense meaning while already starting to produce the grammatical…

This study aims to describe the relationships between child-internal and child-external factors and the consonant accuracy of bilingual children. More specifically, the study looks at internal factors: expressive and receptive vocabulary, and external factors: language exposure and language status, of a group of 4-year-old bilingual Arabic-French…

Young children exhibit a video deficit for spatial recall, learning less from on-screen than in-person demonstrations. Some theoretical accounts emphasize memory constraints (e.g., insufficient retrieval cues, competition between memory representations). Such accounts imply memory representations are graded, yet video deficit studies measuring…

Taking into consideration that young children engage with mathematics outside of the preschool classroom, this study focuses on adults' awareness of numerical ideas raised by young children without and with adult involvement. Ninety adults in Israel, the majority of whom were parents or grandparents of children aged 3-6 years, participated in this…

The current study adopted meta-analysis method to determine the effect of school readiness programs on preschool children. The researchers scanned national (i.e., Turkish) and international databases for studies conducted using experimental and quasi-experimental methods which were published between 2008 and 2022 that met this study's inclusion…

The interactions young children have with adults are of vital importance in developing mathematical reasoning. This paper describes the behaviours of teachers who work with young children in school yet manage to have individual and natural mathematical conversations with children. These mathematical interactions young children have with their…

This study explores Learning Performance Analytics in the context of the Figurenotes Music course for young children aged 2 to 6 with special needs in Taiwan. Using the ARMA model, the researchers analyze the dynamic learning outcomes of 46 participants in two-stage courses over 32 weeks. The empirical findings reveal that children aged 2 to 3…

STEM learning in not merely a matter of training children for current jobs--the job market is likely to change radically before a current kindergartner graduates from college, as artificial intelligence, robotics, and other technologies evolve and new technologies emerge. STEM education is an integrated, cross-disciplinary approach to teaching…

How does one assess developmental change when the measures themselves change with development? Most developmental studies of word learning use either looking (infants) or pointing (preschoolers and older). With little empirical evidence of the relationship between the two measures, developmental change is difficult to assess. This paper analyzes…