For decades, developmental psychologists and educators have emphasized that learning about counterintuitive phenomena may be a critical driving force for cognitive development. Thus far, little is known about the specific content that children seek to enrich their knowledge. Using a novel book-choice paradigm, we directly examine children's…

The present research evaluated whether behavioral tasks ("direct assessments") commonly used to assess young children's social cognitive development in laboratory studies could have utility for measuring and predicting U.S. children's outcomes in educational contexts. To do so, children (N = 95; 49 boys, 46 girls; 41.05% White, 16.84%…

Young children tend to behave more generously when their actions are identified than when they are anonymous, yet we know little about the cognitive foundations required for anonymity to impact generosity. In three studies we examined Canadian children's understanding of anonymity and its impact on sharing in anonymous and identified contexts.…

Children's arithmetic performance is dependent on the arithmetic task format, but little is known about how domain-specific and domain-general abilities contribute to solving diverse arithmetic problems. In this study, 145 Italian typically developing children between the ages of five and six, who have not yet received formal schooling, were…

The present study examined how culture and gender influence the self-construal of mothers and their four-year-olds during dyadic reminiscing. Participants were 21 Thai (11 girls, 10 boys) and 21 American (10 girls, 11 boys) mother-child dyads. Thai dyads exhibited a more interdependent self-construal, whereas American dyads exhibited a more…

Children's use of appropriate techniques for remembering and the effectiveness of deliberate strategies improve throughout elementary school. However, relatively little is known about the contextual factors that may play a role in the development of these skills as children enter formal school. Building upon findings from the mother-child…

The aim of the present study was to explore how maternal reminiscing relates to socioemotional development during middle childhood. Specifically, analyses explored the link between maternal reminiscing and children's internalizing (emotional problems and peer problems), externalizing (hyperactivity and conduct problems) and prosocial behavior…

Early childhood is marked by significant developmental changes in the ability to recognize facial expressions. However, since the COVID-19 outbreak, people have been wearing masks more frequently during social interactions which may hamper the recognition of facial expressions. This study examines whether preschoolers recognize the facial…

This article examines how Masters of Business Administration (MBA) students, at the height of the Occupy Wall Street movement (Occupy), strove to organize socially and environmentally sustainable business practices. We asked: what kinds of learning were supported through student-led organizing, and how? We designed a multi-sited case study that…

Current research in science education and the cognitive sciences has highlighted the importance of epistemic tools in scaffolding learners to think in ways consistent with scientific practices. However, recent studies on epistemic tool have mainly focused on epistemic cognition, but not epistemic metacognition. Epistemic metacognition, which…

Developing a sound ability of noticing is a crucial competency for both teachers and medical professionals in the respective professional and disciplinary communities. In this article, we investigate noticing in practice--how members of a professional community in the high-tech modern medicine specialty of Advanced Heart Failure use this ability…

Modeling is an important element of discovery and design processes because it can help individuals to comprehend and facilitate solutions to problems, mediate among mental and external representations, and off-load cognitive demands. However, engaging in model generation, comprehension, and transformation requires the orchestration of domain…

Learning in data-rich environments has been a focus of learning sciences research since the inception of the field, with increasing interest in the ways learners "narrate data." This article examines the narration of data from the perspective of "learning on the move," identifying mobilities of data, and of the narratives in…

In this article, we report on a video-based field study of an intergenerational family's enactment of a mathematical object (a torus) in the context of an immersive mathematics exhibition in a science center. To do this, we center interwoven, multi-party mobilities at multiple scales--walking, gesturing, touching, and postural adjustments -- as…

In this article, we introduce and analyze learning experiences made possible by a teaching framework that we have developed and call "digital spatial story lines" (DSSLs). DSSLs offer a novel approach to learning on the move by engaging learners with related conceptual practices of archival curation, digital mapping, and the production…