Examined relationships between quality of center-based child care and infant cognitive and language development. Subjects were 79 African American 1-year-olds. Found that quality of infant care positively correlated with scores on standardized assessment of cognitive development, language development, and communication skills. Quality of care in…

Compared language development of 16 firstborn and 16 secondborn children at 21 months to investigate whether secondborn children benefit from overheard conversations between caregivers and older siblings. Found that secondborn children were more advanced that firstborn in pronoun production, while not differing general language development,…

Examined two-year-olds' word learning. In one study, adults modeled the new word for an object novel to the children; in another, the object was novel only for the adult. Subjects displayed significant learning of new words in both settings, suggesting that toddlers understand that novelty in a discourse setting is determined from the speaker's…

Assessed delayed-response performance in 120 infants 7, 9, and 11 months old. Correct response was identified as either retrieval of a hidden object or a gaze toward its location. Performance improved with age, was above chance for each age group in each condition, and was more often correct for gaze response, suggesting a significant effect of…

Examined toddlers' awareness of partners' knowledge states when communicating with them. In two studies, the parent either witnessed or did not witness placement of an object the child asked for help in retrieving. Subjects named the object and location and gestured to its location more often for parents who did not know the information than for…

Examined the nature of three- and four-year-olds' understanding of various mental representations, using story protagonists who held mental representations (beliefs, pretenses, and memories) that contradicted reality. Results suggest that young children conceptualize pretense as involving mental representations and that they have more difficulty…

Investigated preschoolers' ability to distinguish between determinate situations--in which the available evidence eliminates all uncertainty about an outcome--and indeterminate situations. Found that preschoolers readily give "can tell" responses to determinate problems, and "can't tell" responses when they think it appropriate. Different children…

Two studies of development of spatial representation with two dimensions found that children as young as five years use the same two independent dimensions in fine-grained spatial coding of location in a circle as adults use--radius and angle. The adult pattern, where angle as well as radius is coded hierarchically, emerges by nine years. (HTH)

Three experiments explored effects of stimulus and task factors on tendency to categorize according to taxonomic relations when those relations conflict with appearances. When provided with information that constrained categorization, preschoolers and adults reliably based their decisions on taxonomic relations between physically dissimilar items.…

Four studies explored preschoolers' understanding of thought bubbles depicted in cartoons. Few three- and four-year olds knew what a thought-bubble depiction was without instruction, but if simply told that the thought bubble "shows what someone is thinking," the majority easily understood the devices as depicting thoughts generally and individual…

Forty-seven children tested at age three on their understanding of basic emotions were tested again at age six on their understanding of conflicting emotions. Found that antecedents to emotion understanding at age three continued to be significantly related to children's understanding at six, including participation in discourse about causality,…

Five experiments investigated children's understanding that expectations based on prior experience may influence a person's interpretation of ambiguous visual information. Results suggest that understanding of interpretation begins at approximately six years of age. (HTH)

Examined developmental differences in the effect of stereotype manipulations on the construction of new memories, and the relation between stereotyped activity preferences and memory for gender-related information among four-, six-, and eight-year olds. Contrary to expectations, stereotype manipulation effects interacted with gender; effects were…

Examined four-year olds' use of mental state terms in conversations. Found that more references to mental states were made in conversations with siblings and friends than with mothers. Frequent use of terms by both partners was related to cooperative interaction in child-friend and child-sibling dyads. Found associations with measures of language…

Four studies investigated how differential input affects preschoolers' abilities to learn novel color words. Found that four- and five-year olds interpreted novel words as shape terms when ostensive information was provided but as color terms when additional information, contrastive or inclusive, was given. Three-year olds generally did not make…