To become more skilled as pedestrians, children need to acquire a view of the traffic environment as one in which road users are active agents with different intentions and objectives. This paper describes a simulation study designed to explore children's understanding of drivers' intentions. It also investigated the effect of training children's…

The present study assessed children's evaluations of hypothetical peer provocation. Participants (N = 75, ages 8-11) were presented with hypothetical vignettes depicting relationally aggressive, physically aggressive and prosocial peers engaging in provocative behaviours directed at the participant, including (a) relational (not receiving a party…

In the present study, 9-, 12- and 16-month-old infants were familiarized to a block that was repeatedly lowered into a container and lifted from that container again. In the subsequent test phase, the block passed through the container opening either without making contact with the container rim or colliding with the rim in three places but…

Children aged 2 and 3 years were tested for a previously neglected form of knowledge about visual perception; namely, whether an observer can see a figure that is partially occluded. The results indicate that for children of this age the visibility of a figure's face is crucial for judging visibility, whereas the visibility of the legs is not.…

This study assessed the theory of mind (ToM) and executive functioning (EF) abilities of 124 typically developing preschool children aged 3 to 5 years in relation to whether or not they had a child-aged sibling (i.e. a child aged 1 to 12 years) at home with whom to play and converse. On a ToM battery that included tests of false belief,…

In Study 1, 7-month-old infants (N = 58) looked reliably more at an adult's face when she playfully pulled a toy away from them compared with when she simply handed them the toy. In Study 2, 7- and 9-month-old infants (N = 36) interacted with an adult who played a teasing game and then held a neutral or happy facial expression. Compared with a…

To investigate sources of influences connecting mothers' and their children's anxious cognitions, 65 children (aged 10 to 11 years) completed self-report measures of anxiety. Children and mothers responded to an ambiguous scenario questionnaire and measures of parenting style and life events. Mothers also reported expectations about their child's…

When pictures and words are presented serially in an explicit memory task, recall of the pictures is superior. While this effect is well established in the adult population, little is known of the development of this picture-superiority effect in typical development. This task was administered to 80 participants from middle childhood to…

This study investigated the relationship between preschool children's social-cognitive abilities (theory of mind and social information processing; SIP) and their observed physical and relational aggressive behaviour. Children with more advanced social-cognitive abilities engaged in fewer acts of physical aggression; however, much of the ability…

We report two studies that examine age differences in pupils' and parents' definitions of the term "bullying," and possible reasons for these including the role of specific experiences. Study 1 compared definitions of "bullying" given by participants in four age groups; 4 to 6 years, 8 years, 14 years and adult. Participants were shown/read 17…

We conducted three studies that investigated first through third grade children's ability to identify and remember deductive inference or guessing as the source of a belief, to detect and retain the certainty of a belief generated through inference or guessing and to evaluate another observer's inferences and guesses. Immediately following a…

Unintentional injury is the leading cause of pediatric mortality among American children, but the role of environmental context remains poorly understood as a risk for child injury. Couched in Bronfenbrenner's (1977) ecological theory, this study analyzed data from a sample of almost 900 children to identify relations between the home and…

We examined the relations among children's effortful control, school liking, and academic competence with a sample of 240 7- to 12-year-old children. Parents and children reported on effortful control, and teachers and children assessed school liking. Children, parents, and teachers reported on children's academic competence. Significant positive…

Moral gender differences have been discussed in terms of Kohlbergian stages and content of orientations and taken to correspond to universal stable male and female features. The present study instead focuses on moral motivation and explains differences in terms of role expectations. We assessed moral motivation in 203 adolescents by a newly…

This study examined variation in friendship formation and friendship stability as a function of children's and their friends' victimization, overt aggression, and relational aggression. Participants were 605 pre- and early adolescents in fifth through eighth grades (M age = 12.05) assessed twice over a three-month period. Scores for stability and…