First-order and advanced theory of mind (ToM and AToM), and their structures and relations were investigated in 229 children aged 5-8 years. ToM was assessed using 6 tasks from the first-order ToM scale, while AToM was measured using an 18-item battery (higher-order false-belief understanding; strange stories; faux pas test; eyes test;…

Do social cognition and epistemological understanding promote elementary school children's experimentation skills? To investigate this question, 402 children (ages 8, 9, and 10) in 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grades were assessed for their experimentation skills, social cognition (advanced theory of mind [AToM]), epistemological understanding (understanding…

Intelligence, as well as working memory and attention, affect the acquisition of mathematical competencies. This paper aimed to examine the influence of working memory and attention when taking different mathematical skills into account as a function of children's intellectual ability. Overall, intelligence, working memory, attention and numerical…

These proceedings contain the papers of the 18th International Conference on Cognition and Exploratory Learning in the Digital Age (CELDA 2021), held virtually, due to an exceptional situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, from October 13-15, 2021, and organized by the International Association for Development of the Information Society…

An increasing number of findings suggest that cognition is grounded in sensorimotor experiences. Research suggests that fine motor skills (FMS) link to cognitive abilities. Existing studies, however, lack conceptual and methodological differentiation regarding FMS and little is known about the directional nature of links. In study 1, we measured…

Epidemiological data reveal that there is a need for prevention measures specifically targeted at children with low SES. In the German federal state Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania preschools in socially deprived regions can apply for additional funds to support children with developmental risks. Mandatory criteria for obtaining these funds involve…

Theories and research in embodied cognition postulate that cognition grounded in action enjoys a processing advantage. Extending this theory to the study of how fine motor skills (FMS) link to vocabulary development in preschool children, the authors investigated FMS and vocabulary in 76 preschoolers. Building on previous research, they…

These proceedings contain the papers of the 13th International Conference on Cognition and Exploratory Learning in the Digital Age (CELDA 2016), October 28-30, 2016, which has been organized by the International Association for Development of the Information Society (IADIS), co-organized by the University of Mannheim, Germany, and endorsed by the…

Identifying correlates of aggressive behavior in children might help to find potential candidates for interventions in aggression reduction. While some previous studies found that children's Theory of Mind (ToM) and inhibitory control (IC) correlate with aggressive behavior, others did not confirm this relation. One explanation for these mixed…

In our current culture, children are exposed to a huge amount of audiovisual media, of which many formats include animated pictures, such as in videos, for instance. The current study addresses the use of audiovisual media in order to increase the effectiveness of learning and teaching. We examined how auditory text, audiovisual text with static…

Early scientific thinking in kindergarten (6-year-olds) was investigated in a large study involving 227 participants. We investigated (1) whether individual differences across 3 scientific-thinking components (experimentation, data interpretation, and understanding the nature of science) are stable across children, (2) whether children's increased…

In the context of joint decision-making, we investigated whether preschoolers alter the informativeness of their justifications depending on the common ground that they share with their partner. Pairs of 3- and 5-year-olds (N = 146) were introduced to a novel animal with unique characteristics (e.g., eating rocks). In the common ground condition,…

External number representations are commonly used throughout the first years of instruction. The twenty-frame is a grid that contains two rows of 10 dots each, and within each row, dots are organized in two groups of five. The assumption is that children can make use of these structures for enumerating the dots, rather than relying on one-by-one…

Two studies were conducted to investigate effects of domain knowledge on metacognitive monitoring across the life span in materials of different complexity. Participants from 4 age groups (3rd-grade children, adolescents, younger and older adults) were compared using an expert-novice paradigm. In Study 1, soccer experts' and novices'…