Attention allocation in word learning may vary developmentally based on the novelty of the object. It has been suggested that children differentially learn verbs based on the novelty of the agent, but adults do not because they automatically infer the object's category and thus treat it like a familiar object. The current research examined…

Children who are able to recognize others' emotions are successful in a variety of socioemotional domains, yet we know little about how school-aged children's abilities develop, particularly in the family context. We hypothesized that children develop emotion recognition skill as a function of parents' own emotion-related beliefs,…

Children's performance on cognitive tasks is often described in categorical terms in that a child is described as either passing or failing a test, or knowing or not knowing some concept. We used binomial mixture models to determine whether individual children could be classified as passing or failing two search tasks, the DeLoache model room…

In this study, we address the construction of the first symbolic uses of objects in contexts of triadic interaction (adult-child-object). We assume that symbolic productions are based on public rules of the use of objects previously agreed by the community. The first symbols are not rooted in any literal, evident reality, but in shared rules of…

Despite consensus in the developmental literature regarding the role of executive function (EF) skills in supporting the development of language skills during the preschool years, we know relatively little about the associations between EF skills, including all EF components, and vocabulary skills among preschool-aged children. In this paper, we…

Children showing poor executive functioning may not fully benefit from learning experiences at home and school and may lag behind in literacy skills. This hypothesis was tested in a sample of 276 kindergarten children. Executive functions and literacy skills were tested at about 61?months and again a year later. In line with earlier studies,…

The ability to connect numbers and magnitudes is an important prerequisite for math learning, here referred to as number-magnitude skills. It has been proposed that working memory plays an important role in constructing these connections. The aim of the current study was to examine if working memory accounts for constructing these connections by…

Working memory and inductive reasoning ability each appear related to children's achievement in math and reading. Dynamic measures of reasoning, based on an assessment procedure including feedback, may provide additional predictive value. The aim of this study was to investigate whether working memory and dynamic measures of analogical…

Research examining cognition and science learning has focused on working memory, but evidence implicates a broader set of executive functions. The current study examined executive functions and learning of biology in young adolescents. Fifty-six participants, aged 12-13?years, completed tasks of working memory (Spatial Working Memory), inhibition…

A relatively quick, face-to-face, adaptive working memory training intervention was assessed in 5-to 8-year-old typically developing children, randomly allocated to a 6-week intervention condition, or an active control condition. All children received 18 sessions of 10?minutes, three times/week for 6?weeks. Assessments of six working memory…

Previous research indicates learning words facilitates categorisation. The current study explores how categorisation affects word learning. In the current study, we investigated whether learning about a category facilitates retention of newly learned words by presenting 2-year-old children with multiple referent selection trials to the same object…

Until now, a successful application of the mental rotation paradigm was restricted to children 5?years or older. By contrast, recent findings suggest that even infants can perform mental rotation. Unlike the methods used in infant studies (looking time), our new research paradigm allows for the measurement and interpretation of reaction times.…

This study examined the longitudinal relations of mother-child affect exchanges at 18?months with children's mastery motivation at 39?months. Observation and questionnaire data were collected from mother-child dyads when children were 18?months; 43 mothers again rated their children's mastery motivation at 39?months. Results suggested…

An unexplored aspect of contextual variation in emotion talk is the extent to which the emotions mothers and children discuss relate to the child, mother, or another self. To establish the extent to which mothers and children personalize the emotions they discuss, we examined the emotion talk of 40 American mother-child dyads in three…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the following: (i) associations among children's prior contact with people with disabilities and the three dimensions of children's attitudes towards people with disabilities: children's understanding of and their feelings about people with disabilities and their behavioural intentions to…