The correlates between public and private self-consciousness and internalizing difficulties were examined during early adolescence. Friendship quality was assessed as a possible moderator of the relation between self-consciousness and maladjustment. One hundred and thirty-seven young adolescents (N = 87 girls; M age = 13.98 years) reported on…

We examined deaf and hearing children's progression of steps in theory of mind (ToM) development including their understanding of social pretending. Ninety-three children (33 deaf; 60 hearing) aged 3-13 years were tested on a set of six closely matched ToM tasks. Results showed that deaf children were delayed substantially behind hearing children…

A series of studies examined the presence of centralist versus peripheralist responding about the physical location of psychological processes. Centralists respond that processes such as cognition and emotion are a function of the brain. Peripheralists respond that such processes are located in other parts of the body, such as the heart. Although…

Behavioural performance in the Go/NoGo task was compared with caregiver and teacher reports of inattention and hyperactivity-impulsivity in 1,151 children (N = 557 boys; N = 594 girls) age 9-10 years old. Errors of commission (NoGo errors) were significantly correlated with symptom counts of hyperactivity-impulsivity, while errors of omission (Go…

This set of studies examined the ability of 3-year-olds to conceptualize multiple pretend identities with objects. Rather than relying on verbal response measures, as has been done in the past, children's creative and inferential pretend actions were used as indicators of their understanding. The common structure to all four studies was that…

Given that depression is a debilitating disorder, it is critical that we advance our understanding about the aetiology of this disorder. This study investigated both traditional (temperament and parenting) and novel (emotion regulation strategy) risk factors associated with adolescent depression. Forty-four adolescents (12-16 years; 64% females)…

This study compares the ability of children aged from 6 to 11 to freely produce emotional labels based on detailed scenarios (labelling task), and their ability to depict basic emotions in their human figure drawing (subsequent drawing task). This comparison assesses the relevance of the use of a human figure drawing task in order to test…

The present study examined specialized associations between parental control and child aggression in a sample of 600 8- to 10-years old children. Parental control dimensions and aggression subtypes were assessed using multiple informants (i.e. children, mothers, fathers, peers, and teachers). In line with expectations, parental physical punishment…

Based on formulations about the possible consequences for adaptation of gender non-normative behaviour, we investigated predictive and concurrent relations of hyperactivity and shyness to various aspects of adaptation focusing on possible effects of sex. At ages 5-6, parents and preschool teachers rated hyperactivity and shyness for 151 children…

This study investigated 15- and 18-month-olds' understanding of the link between actions and emotions. Infants watched a videotape in which three adult models performed an action on an object. Each adult expressed the same emotion (positive, negative, or neutral affect) on completion of the action. Infants were subsequently given 20 seconds to…

Inspection time (IT) measures speed of information processing without the confounding influence of motor speed. While IT has been found to relate to cognitive abilities in adults and older children, no measure of IT has been validated for use with children younger than 6 years. This study examined the validity of a new measure of IT for preschool…

The primary purposes of the present study were to clarify previous work on the association between counterfactual thinking and false belief performance to determine (1) whether these two variables are related and (2) if so, whether executive function skills mediate the relationship. A total of 92 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds completed false belief,…

Previous research has suggested that children of 5/6 years fail to understand that they are the authority on their own self-knowledge. That is, when asked questions like, "Who knows best when you are feeling tired?", they tend to cite their mother rather than themselves. Here we report a study that, rather than asking about generalities ("Who…

A growing corpus of evidence suggests that morphology could play a role in reading acquisition, and that young readers could be sensitive to the morphemic structure of written words. In the present experiment, we examined whether and when morphological information is activated in word recognition. French fourth graders made visual lexical…

Embodied views of cognition propose that concepts are grounded in sensorimotor experience. Diverse aspects of sensorimotor experience, like action and context information, could play a key role in the formation and processing of manipulable object concepts. Specifically, contextual information could help to link specific actions experienced with…