Three experiments examined understanding of scalar implicature, specifically understanding that use of a term (e.g., some) indicates the speaker had reasons not to use a more informative term (e.g., all). Results reveal consistent ordering in which representations of weak scalar terms tend to be treated logically by young competent participants…

Two experiments tested predictions of dual-route-cascaded and triangle frameworks regarding effect among first-graders of having a word in oral vocabulary prior to reading that same word. Results suggest that word-specific phonological information is represented in the reading system independently of semantic or articulatory influences. Results…

Provides a theoretical account of children's success on theory of mind (ToM) tasks and the discrepancies found across different ToM tasks, and examines the role of indexical and symbolic referencing. Found that 4- to 6-year-olds succeeded more on tasks with a high ratio of indexical to symbolic references than on tasks with a high ratio of…

Evaluated infants' ability to form new object categories based on either visual or naming information at 16 and 20 months using an object manipulation task. Found that infants at both ages showed evidence of using visual information to categorize the objects. Only 20-month-olds used naming information. Found a correlation between vocabulary size…

Two experiments examined differences in the early noun learning of English- and Japanese-speaking children. Found that English-speaking children's vocabularies were heavily lopsided with many more object than animal names, whereas Japanese-speaking children's vocabularies were more evenly balanced. Results suggested that early learners of English…

We investigated whether children's ability to deal with referentially opaque contexts could be predicted by both metarepresentational ability (false-belief understanding) and metalinguistic awareness (the ability to compare and evaluate statements containing referring expressions). Five- to 7-year-olds completed opacity, false-belief,…

Motor influences on the mental transformation of body parts have been observed in both children and adults. Previous findings indicated that these influences were more pronounced in children than in adults, suggesting a stronger link between motor processes and imagery in children. The present series of two experiments casts doubt on the general…

Two studies used a new paradigm to examine preschool children's (i.e., 2-, 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds) word learning across multiple sense modalities. In Study 1 (n = 60), children heard a word for an object that they touched but did not see, while word learning was examined using objects that were seen but not touched. In Study 2 (n = 60), children…

Three experiments examined whether preschoolers recognize that the causal properties of objects generalize to new members of the same set given either deterministic or probabilistic data. Experiment 1 found that 3- and 4-year-olds were able to make such a generalization given deterministic data but were at chance when they observed probabilistic…

An experimental design was utilized to examine the effects of elaborative talk during and/or after an event on children's event memory reports. Sixty preschoolers were assigned randomly to one of four conditions that varied according to a researcher's use of high- or low- elaborative during- and/or post-event talk about a camping event. In a…

The aim of the present study was to investigate the role of executive functions (EF) in theory-of-mind (ToM) performance in deaf children and adolescents. Four groups of deaf children aged 7-16 years, with different language backgrounds at home and at school, that is, bilingually instructed native signers, oralist-instructed native signers, and…

Family reminiscing is a critical part of family interaction related to child outcome. In this study, we extended previous research by examining both mothers and fathers, in two-parent racially diverse middle-class families, reminiscing with their 9- to 12-year-old children about both the facts and the emotional aspects of shared positive and…

This study examined maternal beliefs about the functions of memory sharing and the relations between these beliefs and mother-child reminiscing behaviors in a cross-cultural context. Sixty-three European American and 47 Chinese mothers completed an open-ended questionnaire concerning their beliefs about the functions of parent-child memory…

In three experiments, 3 1/2- to 6-year-old children were presented with analogical problems in which the protagonists were either real people or fantasy characters. Children were more likely to transfer solutions from the stories about real people rather than the stories about fantasy characters. These results suggest that the use of a fantasy…

This longitudinal study explores linkages between patterns of mother-child conversation as events unfold and children's subsequent event memory reports. Eighty-nine mother-child dyads took part in novel "adventures" in their homes when the children were 36 and 42 months old. In contrast to "low joint talk" dyads, the conversations of "high joint…