Previous studies have reported that infants selectively reproduce observed actions and have argued that this selectivity reflects understanding of intentions and goals, or goal-directed imitation. We reasoned that if selective imitation of goal-directed actions reflects understanding of intentions, infants should demonstrate stability across…

Previous research has shown indirectly that infants may use two different mechanisms-an object tracking system and an analog magnitude mechanism--to represent small (less than 4) and large (greater than or equal to 4) numbers of objects, respectively. The current study directly tested this hypothesis in an ordinal choice task by presenting 10- to…

Two studies investigated differences in the comprehension and production of words in 2-year-old children and adults. Study 1 compared children's speaking and understanding of the names of 12 novel objects presented over three weekly sessions. Study 2 tested adults' performance under similar training and testing conditions over two sessions. The…

We investigated the role of inhibitory control in young children's human figure drawing. We used the Bear-Dragon task as a measure of inhibitory control and used the classification system devised by Cox and Parkin to measure the development of human figure drawing. We tested 50 children aged between 40 and 64 months. Regression analysis showed…

Individuals with Down syndrome tend to have a marked impairment of verbal short-term memory. The chief aim of this study was to investigate whether phonemic discrimination contributes to this deficit. The secondary aim was to investigate whether phonological representations are degraded in verbal short-term memory in people with Down syndrome…

The objective of this study was to examine why rapid automatized naming (RAN) is related to reading by manipulating processes involved at the input, processing, and output stages of its production. In total, 65 children in Grade 2 and 65 in Grade 6 were assessed on serial and discrete RAN (Digits and Objects), Cancellation, RAN Yes/No, and oral…

Infant responses to adult-defined unattractive male body shapes versus attractive male body shapes were assessed using visual preference and habituation procedures. Looking behavior indicated that 9-month-olds have a preference for unattractive male body shapes over attractive ones; however, this preference is demonstrated only when head…

There has been much recent interest in letter position coding in adults, but little is known about the development of this process in children learning to read. Here, the letter position coding abilities of 127 children in Grades 2, 3, and 4 (aged 7-10 years) were examined by comparing their performance in reading aloud "migratable" words (e.g.,…

People often displace their anger and aggression against innocent targets, sometimes called scapegoats. Tragic historic events suggest that members of ethnic minority out-groups may be especially likely to be innocent targets. The current experiment examined displaced aggression of Dutch youths against Dutch in-group peers versus Moroccan…

Continuous color changes of an array of elements appear to stop changing if the array undergoes a coherent motion. This "silencing" illusion was demonstrated for adults by Suchow and Alvarez ("Current Biology", 2011, vol. 21, pp. 140-143). The current forced-choice preferential looking study examined 4-month-old infants' sensitivity to the…

There are few direct examinations of whether face-processing difficulties in autism are disproportionate to difficulties with other complex non-face stimuli. Here we examined discrimination ability and memory for faces, cars, and inverted faces in children and adolescents with and without autism. Results showed that, relative to typical children,…

This article presents a simple theory according to which the left-right reversal of single digits by 5- and 6-year-old children is mainly due to the application of an implicit right-writing or -orienting rule. A number of nontrivial predictions can be drawn from this theory. First, left-oriented digits (1, 2, 3, 7, and 9) will be reversed more…

We examined how rapid automatized naming (RAN) components--articulation time and pause time--predict word and text reading fluency in a consistent orthography (Greek). In total, 68 children were followed from Grade 2 to Grade 6 and were assessed three times on RAN (Digits and Objects), phonological awareness, orthographic processing, speed of…

Three experiments investigated whether a negativity bias in social perception extends to preschool-aged children's memory for the details of others' social actions and experiences. After learning about individuals who committed nice or mean social actions, children in Experiment 1 were more accurate at remembering who was mean compared with who…

Various aspects of moral functioning, aggression, and positive peer regard were assessed in 153 preschool children. Our hypotheses were inspired by an evolutionary approach to morality that construes moral norms as tools of the social elite. Accordingly, children were also rated for social dominance and strategies for its attainment. We predicted…