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Executive functions or cognitive self-regulatory control processes are critical for children's ability to successfully navigate their academic and social environment. In this study, we focused on the development of one critical executive function skill, that of inhibitory control. In a longitudinal study, we tested 96 children at 24, 30, 36, 50, and 60 months of age with age-appropriate measures of inhibition. We found evidence for the developmental stability of inhibitory abilities. Inhibitory control at 30 months of age was strongly related to inhibitory control at 60 months of age even when verbal IQ was partialled out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In developmental research, religiousness is typically measured with omnibus affiliation or attendance variables that underspecify how the religious cultural contexts and experiences that affiliation represents influence developmental outcomes. This study explores associations between five aspects of a religious cultural context (family religiosity, religious schooling, church‐based relationships with peers and adults, and view of God) in 844 seven‐ to 12‐year‐old Christian children to examine how they differentially predict self‐esteem. Results of a structural equation model (SEM) analysis indicated that God image and peer church relationships directly predicted self‐esteem, whereas God image mediated the influence of adult church relationships and family religious practices on self‐esteem. A multiple group SEM analysis met the criterion for weak, but not strong, evidence that self‐esteem is more related to younger children's adult church relationships but older children's peer church relationships. God image tended to be more related to younger children's family religious practices but older children's adult church relationships. Implications for developmental researchers and practitioners are discussed. Statement of contributionWhat is already known on this subject?Religious affiliation is an omnibus variable representing multiple contexts of development.Self‐esteem is an important outcome variable with different influences across development.Religious affiliation is associated with increased self‐esteem.What does this study add?Children's experience in the contexts of religious affiliation influences development differently.It is not just affiliation, but specific religious contexts that influence children's self‐esteem.The role of religious contexts in shaping children's self‐esteem shifts across development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sensitivity to facial and vocal emotion is fundamental to children's social competence. Previous research has focused on children's facial emotion recognition, and few studies have investigated non-linguistic vocal emotion processing in childhood. We compared facial and vocal emotion recognition and processing biases in 4- to 11-year-olds and adults. Eighty-eight 4- to 11-year-olds and 21 adults participated. Participants viewed/listened to faces and voices (angry, happy, and sad) at three intensity levels (50%, 75%, and 100%). Non-linguistic tones were used. For each modality, participants completed an emotion identification task. Accuracy and bias for each emotion and modality were compared across 4- to 5-, 6- to 9- and 10- to 11-year-olds and adults. The results showed that children's emotion recognition improved with age; preschoolers were less accurate than other groups. Facial emotion recognition reached adult levels by 11 years, whereas vocal emotion recognition continued to develop in late childhood. Response bias decreased with age. For both modalities, sadness recognition was delayed across development relative to anger and happiness. The results demonstrate that developmental trajectories of emotion processing differ as a function of emotion type and stimulus modality. In addition, vocal emotion processing showed a more protracted developmental trajectory, compared to facial emotion processing. The results have important implications for programmes aiming to improve children's socio-emotional competence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A measure of subjective social status ( SSS) was examined among high ( White), and low ( Black and Roma) ethnic status children in Portugal within a developmental design including 6-8-year-old and 9-12-year-old children. White children favoured their in-group over the Black and Roma out-groups on the SSS measure, social preferences and positive as well as negative trait attributions. Generally, the Black and Roma showed equal SSS, preferences and trait attribution for their in-group and the high status White out-group, but not the other low-status out-group. With age White children generally demonstrated higher SSS for Black and Roma, preferred them more and attributed more positive traits. For low-status groups, an age effect was found only for Black children who preferred the Roma more with age and attributed more positive traits. Changes on preferences and trait attribution depending on age-group were mediated by SSS. It is concluded that minority group's SSS does not parallel the objective status hierarchy but, rather, is a dynamic reorganisation of group's relative positions serving strategies to cope with their minority condition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study examined 3- and 7-year-olds' performance on two types of episodic foresight tasks: A task that required 'cool' reasoning processes about the use of objects in future situations and a task that required 'hot' processes to inhibit a salient current physiological state in order to reason accurately about a future state. Results revealed that 7-year-olds outperformed 3-year-olds on the episodic foresight task that involved cool processes, but did not show age differences in performance on the task that involved hot processes. In fact, both 3- and 7-year-olds performed equally poorly on the task that required predicting a future physiological state that was in conflict with their current state. Further, performance on the two tasks was unrelated. We discuss the results in terms of differing developmental trajectories for episodic foresight tasks that differentially rely on hot and cool processes and the universal difficulties humans have with predicting later outcomes that conflict with current motivational states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]