Distinctiveness effects in children's (5-, 7-, and 11-year-olds) false memory illusions were examined using visual materials. In Experiment 1, developmental trends (increasing false memories with age) were obtained using Deese-Roediger-McDermott lists presented as words and color photographs but not line drawings. In Experiment 2, when items were…

Girls have caught up with boys in math course taking in high school but reasons for taking math still differ by gender. This study, therefore, investigated gender differences in the linkage between peer relations and math course taking by applying multilevel modeling to a nationally representative data set that includes peer networks and school…

Based on a sample of 406 seven-year-old twins, this study examined whether exposure to friends' social or physical aggression, respectively, moderates the effect of heritability on children's own social and physical aggression. Univariate analyses showed that children's own social and physical aggression were significantly explained by genetic…

Three-, 5-, and 7-year-olds and adults (N = 64) listened to stories depicting 2 protagonists of different ages (infant and child or child and grownup) that encounter an entity that looks like a real (e.g., a snake) or an imaginary (e.g., a ghost) fear-inducing creature. Participants predicted and explained each protagonist's intensity of fear.…

This study examined the effects of coaching (encouragement and rehearsal of false reports) and truth induction (a child-friendly version of the oath or general reassurance about the consequences of disclosure) on 4- to 7-year-old maltreated children's reports (N = 198). Children were questioned using free recall, repeated yes-no questions, and…

Two comprehension experiments were conducted to investigate whether German children are able to use the grammatical cues of word order and word endings (case markers) to identify agents and patients in a causative sentence and whether they weigh these two cues differently across development. Two-year-olds correctly understood only sentences with…

Although genetic influences on individual differences in activity level (AL) are well documented, few studies have considered the etiology of AL from a contextual perspective. In the present study, cross-situational and context-specific genetic effects on individual differences in AL at age 2 were examined. The AL of 312 twin pairs (144…

Ninety-six Colombian children (mean age = 7.7 years) and adolescents (mean age = 14.6 years) made judgments about stealing and physical harm in the abstract and in the context of survival and revenge. All participants judged it wrong to steal or hurt others because of considerations with justice and welfare, and most also judged it wrong to engage…

Responses to an unfamiliar adult were examined in infants of mothers with social phobia (N = 79) and infants of nonanxious comparison mothers (N = 77) at 10 and 14 months in a social referencing paradigm. On each occasion, a female stranger first interacted with the mother and then approached and interacted with the infant. Over time, infants of…

This intervention study tested whether invented spelling plays a causal role in learning to read. Three groups of kindergarten children (mean age = 5 years 7 months) participated in a 4-week intervention. Children in the invented-spelling group spelled words as best they could and received developmentally appropriate feedback. Children in the 2…

Past research has shown that top-heaviness is a perceptual property that plays a crucial role in triggering newborns' preference toward faces. The present study examined the contribution of a second configural property, "congruency," to newborns' face preference. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that when embedded in nonfacelike stimuli,…

Given that girls show more interpersonal concern than boys, it was predicted that more mother-daughter than mother-son dyads would develop a relationship of mutual concerned responsiveness (CR). Two hundred and twenty-six Israeli children (7-8 years old) and 91 mother-child pairs provided narratives of mother-child interactions. At high levels of…

The relation between children's lie-telling and their social and cognitive development was examined. Children (3-8 years) were told not to peek at a toy. Most children peeked and later lied about peeking. Children's subsequent verbal statements were not always consistent with their initial denial and leaked critical information revealing their…

To examine the development of feedforward control during manual tracking, 117 participants in 5 age groups (6 to 7, 8 to 9, 10 to 11, 12 to 14, and 15 to 17 years) tracked an accelerating dot presented on a monitor by moving an electronic pen on a digitizer. To remain successful at higher target velocities, they had to create a predictive model of…

Children's kindergarten experiences are increasingly taking place in full- versus part-day programs, yet important questions remain about whether there are significant and meaningful benefits to full-day kindergarten. Using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study's Kindergarten Cohort (N= 13,776), this study takes a developmental approach to…