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Conflicts arise when members of one religion apply their norms to members of another religion. Two studies explored how one hundred 9- to 15-year-old Hindu and Muslim children from India reason about the scope of religious norms. Both Hindus and Muslims from a diverse Hindu-Muslim school (Study 1) and Hindus from a homogeneous Hindu school (Study 2) more often judged it wrong for Hindus to violate Hindu norms, compared to Muslim norms, and said the opposite for Muslims. In contrast, children judged it wrong for both Hindus and Muslims to harm others. Thus, even in a setting marred by religious conflict, children can restrict the scope of a religion's norms to members of that religion, providing a basis for peaceful coexistence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Humans depend greatly on our cooperative relationships. Thus, when our relationships are damaged by transgressions, they need to be repaired. Such repair requires that the transgressor show remorse and the victim forgive. Previous research demonstrates that as transgressors, young children show remorse and attempt to repair the harm they caused. However, it remains unclear when children, as victims, forgive remorseful transgressors. In Study 1, 5-, but not 4-year-olds, (n = 20 each) were more forgiving of a remorseful transgressor (who did not explicitly apologize) than an unremorseful transgressor. In Study 2, 4-year-olds (n = 20) were more forgiving of an apologetic than unapologetic transgressor. Thus, from early in ontogeny, humans are motivated to repair damaged relationships and thus uphold cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In adolescence, the formation of personal identity and values may be intertwined, since values are among the main issues considered when building one's identity. This study examined how sociocognitive strategies used in the process of identity formation were related with adoption of prodiversity and proequality values, which are critically important for socially diverse contemporary societies. Participants were 916 adolescents (51.4% females, Mage  = 15.65, SDage  = 0.73 at baseline) involved in a three-wave longitudinal study with annual assessments. The results of cross-lagged analyses suggest that more rational and deliberate processing of self-relevant information is related to stronger adoption of prodiversity and proequality values over time. In turn, endorsement of prodiversity and proequality values is related to more rational and deliberate processing of self-relevant issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The susceptibility to gaze cueing in deaf children aged 7-14 years old (N = 16) was tested using a nonlinguistic task. Participants performed a peripheral shape-discrimination task, whereas uninformative central gaze cues validly or invalidly cued the location of the target. To assess the role of sign language experience and bilingualism in deaf participants, three groups of age-matched hearing children were recruited: bimodal bilinguals (vocal and sign-language, N = 19), unimodal bilinguals (two vocal languages, N = 17), and monolinguals (N = 14). Although all groups showed a gaze-cueing effect and were faster to respond to validly than invalidly cued targets, this effect was twice as large in deaf participants. This result shows that atypical sensory experience can tune the saliency of a fundamental social cue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Four studies with 180 5-7 year olds, 165 8-11 year olds and 199 adults show that young children appreciate the distinctive role played by mechanistic explanations in tracking causal patterns. Young children attributed greater knowledge to individuals offering mechanistic reasons for a claim than others who provide equally detailed nonmechanistic reasons. In Study 1, 5-7 year olds attributed greater knowledge to those offering mechanistic reasons. In Studies 2 and 3, all ages (5-7 and adults for Study 2; 5-7, 8-11 and adults for Study 3) assigned greater knowledge to those offering mechanistic reasons about causally central features than those offering nonmechanistic reasons. In Study 4, all ages (5-7, 8-11, adults) modulated the epistemic bias as a function of embedding goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children (N = 267, ages 8-14 years, M = 11.61 years, middle to upper-middle income) made predictions regarding groups of same-aged peers from high-wealth and low-wealth backgrounds. The context involved granting access to a special opportunity. From middle childhood to early adolescence children increasingly expected both high- and low-wealth groups to want access to opportunities for their own group. However, children viewed high-wealth groups as motivated in part by selfishness and low-wealth groups as concerned in part with broader economic inequality. Finally, the higher children's family income, the more they expected group-serving tendencies. These findings revealed children's perceptions of exclusive preferences between economic groups, negative stereotypes about high-wealth children, and awareness of some of the constraints faced by low-wealth children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study utilized actor-partner interdependence modeling to examine the bidirectional effects of younger (Mage  = 18 months) and older siblings (Mage  = 48 months) on later empathy development in a large (n = 452 families), diverse (42% immigrant) Canadian sample. Controlling for parenting, demographic characteristics, sibling relationship quality, and within-child stability in empathic concern, both younger and older siblings' observed empathic concern uniquely predicted relative increases in the other's empathy over a period of 18 months. The strength of the partner effects did not differ by birth order. Sex composition moderated the younger sibling partner effect, whereas age gap moderated the older sibling partner effect. This study highlights the important role that siblings play in enhancing the development of care and concern for others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why are some children more socially anxious than others? One theory holds that socially anxious children are poor mindreaders, which hampers their social interactions; another that socially anxious children are advanced mindreaders leading to heightened self-consciousness in social situations. To test these theories simultaneously, this study (N = 105, ages 8-12) assessed children's mindreading (accuracy in detecting mental states from the eye region), self-consciousness (indexed as physiological blushing during public performance), and social anxiety levels. Results support both theories, showing a quadratic relation between mindreading and social anxiety. Low mindreading was related to clinical levels of social anxiety. High mindreading was related to subclinical levels of social anxiety through blushing. Our findings suggest two social-cognitive pathways to heightened social anxiety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social disruption caused by natural disasters often interrupts educational opportunities for children. However, little is known about children's learning in the following years. This study examined change in academic scores for children variably exposed to a major bushfire in Australia. Comparisons were made between children attending high, medium, and low disaster-affected primary schools 2-4 years after the disaster (n = 24,642; 9-12 years). The results showed that in reading and numeracy expected gains from Year 3 to Year 5 scores were reduced in schools with higher levels of bushfire impact. The findings highlight the extended period of academic impact and identify important opportunities for intervention in the education system to enable children to achieve their academic potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Amid growing controversy about the oft-cited "30-million-word gap," this investigation uses language data from five American communities across the socioeconomic spectrum to test, for the first time, Hart and Risley's (1995) claim that poor children hear 30 million fewer words than their middle-class counterparts during the early years of life. The five studies combined ethnographic fieldwork with longitudinal home observations of 42 children (18-48 months) interacting with family members in everyday life contexts. Results do not support Hart and Risley's claim, reveal substantial variation in vocabulary environments within each socioeconomic stratum, and suggest that definitions of verbal environments that exclude multiple caregivers and bystander talk disproportionately underestimate the number of words to which low-income children are exposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social working memory (WM) has distinct neural substrates from canonical cognitive WM (e.g., color). However, no study, to the best of our knowledge, has yet explored how social WM develops. The current study explored the development of social WM capacity and its relation to theory of mind (ToM). Experiment 1 had sixty-four 3- to 6-year-olds memorize 1-5 biological motion stimuli, the processing of which is considered a hallmark of social cognition. The social WM capacity steadily increased between 3- and 6-year-olds, with the increase between 4 and 5 years being sharp. Furthermore, social WM capacity positively predicted preschoolers' ToM scores, while nonsocial WM capacity did not; this positive correlation was particularly strong among 4-year-olds (Experiment 2, N = 144). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In threatening environments, the short (S) allele of 5-HTTLPR is proposed to augment risk for depression. However, it is unknown whether 5-HTTLPR variation increases risk for depression in environments of deprivation, lacking positive or nurturant features. Two independent longitudinal studies (n = 681 and 176, respectively) examined whether 5-HTTLPR moderated associations between low levels of positive parenting at 11-13 years and subsequent depression at 17-19 years. In both studies only LL homozygous adolescents were at greater risk for depression with decreasing levels of positive parenting. Thus, while the S allele has previously been identified as a susceptible genotype, these findings suggest that the L allele may also confer sensitivity to depression in the face of specific environmental challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although one might expect parents' mind-mindedness (MM; the propensity to view children as mental agents) to relate to everyday mental-state talk (MST) and theory-of-mind capacity, evidence to support this view is lacking. In addition, both the uniqueness and the specificity of relations between parental MM, parental MST, and children's false belief understanding (FBU) are open to question. To address these three gaps, this study tracked 117 preschoolers (60 boys) and their parents across a 13-month period (Mage  = 3.94 years, SD = 0.53, at Time 1). Parental MM, MST, and theory-of-mind capacity showed little overlap. Both MM and MST were weakly associated with children's concurrent FBU, but in line with social constructivist accounts, only MST predicted later FBU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are core-specific and noncore-specific domains of knowledge, but only the core-specific domains benefit from innate skeletal structures. Core skeletal domains are universally shared, even though their particular foci may vary; individuals vary extensively in terms of the noncore domains they acquire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parental autonomy support has been related to positive adolescent outcomes, however, its relation to outcomes in collectivist cultural groups is unclear. This study examined relations of specific autonomy supportive behaviors and outcomes among 401 adolescents (Mage  = 12.87) from the United States (N = 245) and collectivist-oriented Ghana (N = 156). It also examined whether adolescents' self-construals moderated the relations of specific types of autonomy support with outcomes. Factor analyses indicated two types of autonomy support: perspective taking/open exchange and allowance of decision making/choice. In both countries, perspective taking/open exchange predicted positive outcomes, but decision making/choice only did so in the United States. With regard to moderation, the more independent adolescents' self-construals, the stronger the relations of decision making/choice to parental controllingness and school engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The adult lexicon links concepts and labels with related meanings (e.g., dog-cat). How do children's encounters with concepts versus labels contribute to semantic development? Three studies investigated semantic priming in 40 monolinguals and 32 bilinguals, who have similar experience with concepts but different experience with labels (i.e., monolinguals hear "dog," bilinguals hear "dog" and "chien"). Similarities in performance across monolinguals and bilinguals at age 24 months, as well as across bilinguals' two languages at age 30 months, support the position that encounters with concepts contribute more to early semantic development than encounters with labels. Findings also suggest that the effects of semantic priming are challenging to observe at 24 months but are strong in bilinguals by age 30 months. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from a subsample of 913 study children and their friends who participated in the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, the interactive contributions of child-reported attribution biases and teacher-reported child emotional intensity (EI) at Grade 4 (M = 9.9 years) to observed child-friend interaction at Grade 6 (M = 11.9 years) were examined. Study children's hostile attribution bias, combined with high EI, predicted more negative child-friend interaction. In contrast, benign attribution bias, combined with high EI, predicted more positive child-friend interaction. The findings are discussed in light of the "fuel" interpretation of EI, in which high-intensity emotions may motivate children to act on their cognitive biases for better or for worse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines how parent socioeconomic status (SES) directly and indirectly predicts children's school readiness through pathways of parental investment. Data come from direct assessments with preschool children and surveys with their primary caregivers in Ghana at the start of the 2015-2016 school year (N = 2,137; Mage  = 5.2 years). Results revealed SES-related gaps in all parental investment characteristics and child school readiness skills. Preschool involvement served as the primary mediating mechanism in the path from SES to most school readiness skills, though it did not predict executive function. The number of books in the household was marginally positively predictive of early literacy, whereas at-home stimulation was negatively related to motor, literacy, and numeracy skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Questioning is a core component of formal pedagogy. Parents commonly question children, but do they use questions to teach? This article defines "pedagogical questions" as questions for which the questioner already knows the answer and intended to help the questionee learn. Transcripts of parent-child conversations were collected from the CHILDES database to examine the frequency and distribution of pedagogical questions. Analysis of 2,166 questions from 166 mother-child dyads and 64 father-child dyads (child's age between 2 and 6 years) showed that pedagogical questions are commonplace during day-to-day parent-child conversations and vary based on child's age, family environment, and historical era. The results serve as a first step toward understanding the role of parent-child questions in facilitating children's learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous work suggests that key factors for replicability, a necessary feature for theory building, include statistical power and appropriate research planning. These factors are examined by analyzing a collection of 12 standardized meta-analyses on language development between birth and 5 years. With a median effect size of Cohen's d = .45 and typical sample size of 18 participants, most research is underpowered (range = 6%-99%; median = 44%); and calculating power based on seminal publications is not a suitable strategy. Method choice can be improved, as shown in analyses on exclusion rates and effect size as a function of method. The article ends with a discussion on how to increase replicability in both language acquisition studies specifically and developmental research more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of social group information on the learning and socializing preferences of Hong Kong Chinese children were examined. Specifically, the degree to which variability in racial out-group exposure affects children's use of race to make decisions about unfamiliar individuals (Chinese, White, Southeast Asian) was investigated. Participants (N = 212; Mage  = 60.51 months) chose functions for novel objects after informants demonstrated their use; indicated with which peer group member to socialize; and were measured on racial group recognition, preference, and identification. Overall, children preferred in-group members, though out-group exposure and the relative social status of out-groups mattered as well. At a young age, children's specific experiences with different races influence how they learn and befriend others across racial group lines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A prevailing theory of mathematical problem solving predicts that children will be less accurate solving a + b = c + __ problems versus a + b = __ + c. However, this has never been tested directly. Because of low base rates, information combined from multiple studies can help improve estimation accuracy and precision. This study compared meta-analysis and individual person data (IPD) analysis using raw data from 14 studies (N = 1,414; ns = 30-232; Mage reported = 8;7). Substantive results challenge the prevailing theory. Methodological results demonstrate the advantages of using meta-analysis and IPD over single-study analysis. Moreover, IPD can be more powerful than meta-regression for detecting between-study moderation effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The data combine objectively measured sleep and thrice-daily salivary cortisol collected from a 4-day diary study in a large Midwestern city with location data on all violent crimes recorded during the same time period for N = 82 children (Mage  = 14.90, range = 11.27-18.11). The primary empirical strategy uses a within-person design to measure the change in sleep and cortisol from the person's typical pattern on the night/day immediately following a local violent crime. On the night following a violent crime, children have later bedtimes. Children also have disrupted cortisol patterns the following morning. Supplementary analyses using varying distances of the crime to the child's home address confirm more proximate crimes correspond to later bedtimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers tested the impact of contextual mismatch, proactive interference, and working memory (WM) on toddlers' transfer across contexts. Forty-two toddlers (27-34 months) completed four object-retrieval trials, requiring memory updating on Trials 2-4. Participants watched hiding events on a tablet computer. Search performance was tested using another tablet (match) or a felt board (mismatch). WM was assessed. On earlier search trials, WM predicted transfer in both conditions, and toddlers in the match condition outperformed those in the mismatch condition; however, the benefit of contextual match and WM decreased over trials. Contextual match apparently increased proactive interference on later trials. Findings are interpreted within existing accounts of the transfer deficit, and a combined account is proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cognitive effort is costly and this cost likely influences the activities in which children engage. Yet, little is known about how school-age children perceive cognitive effort. The subjective value of cognitive effort, that is, how valuable or costly effort is perceived, was investigated in seventy-three 7- to 12-year-olds using an effort discounting paradigm. In two studies, it varied with task difficulty but not age, was predicted by actual effort engagement but not actual success and related to trait interest in effortful activities and proactive control engagement. Children are sensitive to cognitive effort and use it to guide behaviors, suggesting that poor performance may often reflect reluctance to engage cognitive effort rather than low ability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examined links between 4- and 6-year-olds' (n = 101; Mage  = 5.12 years, SD = 0.67; 53% male) ability to distinguish moral and conventional transgressions along different criteria and teacher ratings of proactive and reactive aggression. Latent difference score modeling revealed that moral transgressions were judged more unacceptable and wrong independent of rules and authority than conventional violations, but significant variability in moral-conventional distinctions was also observed. Proactive aggression was associated with less-and reactive aggression was associated with greater-differentiation in moral and conventional concepts. Proactive aggression was not associated with deficits in moral knowledge when other common assessments of early moral understanding were employed, highlighting the importance of using theoretically informed measures of moral judgments and aggression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Minority and majority elementary school students from a Native American reservation (N = 188; K-fifth grade; 5- to 10-year-olds) completed tests of academic self-concepts and self-esteem. School grades, attendance, and classroom behavior were collected. Both minority and majority students exhibited positive self-esteem. Minority students demonstrated lower academic self-concepts and lower achievement than majority students. Two age-related patterns emerged. First, minority students had lower academic achievement than majority students, and this effect was stronger in older (Grades 3-5) than in younger (Grades K-2) students. Second, children's actual achievement was related to their academic self-concepts for older students but more strongly linked to self-esteem in younger students. The authors offer a developmental account connecting students' developing self-representations to their school achievement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using nationally representative data from the Family and Child Experiences Survey 2009 cohort (n = 2,842), this study examined the implications of 3- and 4-year-old's absences from Head Start for their early academic learning. The findings from this study revealed that children who missed more days of school, and especially those who were chronically absent, demonstrated fewer gains in areas of math and literacy during the preschool year. Moreover, excessive absenteeism was found to detract from the potential benefits of quality preschool education and was especially problematic for the early learning of children who entered the Head Start program with a less developed skill set. Implications for policy and practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study was to determine how trajectory clusters of social status (social preference and perceived popularity) and behavior (direct aggression and prosocial behavior) from age 9 to age 14 predicted adolescents' bullying participant roles at age 16 and 17 (n = 266). Clusters were identified with multivariate growth mixture modeling (GMM). The findings showed that participants' developmental trajectories of social status and social behavior across childhood and early adolescence predicted their bullying participant role involvement in adolescence. Practical implications and suggestions for further research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

School tracking creates vast differential learning and schooling opportunities that lead to different academic trajectories. Black adolescents are disproportionally placed in nonhonors tracks possibly compromising their racial and academic identity. Interviews with 20 socioeconomically diverse 12 to 13 year old Black seventh graders revealed that narratives about racial and academic identity vary by track placement. Although most adolescents held negative perceptions about students enrolled in nonhonors courses, students in nonhonors seemed to view the negative perceptions of their classmates as reflections of themselves as Black people and as students. In contrast, adolescents in honors courses viewed these negative perceptions as limited to students in nonhonors. They reported having a greater connection to academics and viewed themselves as positive representatives of Blackness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Findings are presented on a study of 40 gay father families created through surrogacy and a comparison group of 55 lesbian mother families created through donor insemination with a child aged 3-9 years. Standardized interview, observational and questionnaire measures of stigmatization, quality of parent-child relationships, and children's adjustment were administered to parents, children, and teachers. Children in both family types showed high levels of adjustment with lower levels of children's internalizing problems reported by gay fathers. Irrespective of family type, children whose parents perceived greater stigmatization and children who experienced higher levels of negative parenting showed higher levels of parent-reported externalizing problems. The findings contribute to theoretical understanding of the role of family structure and family processes in child adjustment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It was examined how ventral striatum responses to rewards develop across adolescence and early adulthood and how individual differences in state- and trait-level reward sensitivity are related to these changes. Participants (aged 8-29 years) were tested across three waves separated by 2 years (693 functional MRI scans) in an accelerated longitudinal design. The results confirmed an adolescent peak in reward-related ventral striatum, specifically nucleus accumbens, activity. In early to mid-adolescence, increases in reward activation were related to trait-level reward drive. In mid-adolescence to early adulthood decreases in reward activation were related to decreases in state-level hedonic reward pleasure. This study demonstrates that state- and trait-level reward sensitivity account for reward-related ventral striatum activity in different phases of adolescence and early adulthood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gestures, hand movements that accompany speech, affect children's learning, memory, and thinking (e.g., Goldin-Meadow, 2003). However, it remains unknown how children distinguish gestures from other kinds of actions. In this study, 4- to 9-year-olds (n = 339) and adults (n = 50) described one of three scenes: (a) an actor moving objects, (b) an actor moving her hands in the presence of objects (but not touching them), or (c) an actor moving her hands in the absence of objects. Participants across all ages were equally able to identify actions on objects as goal directed, but the ability to identify empty-handed movements as representational actions (i.e., as gestures) increased with age and was influenced by the presence of objects, especially in older children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the extensive research demonstrating the importance of child executive functioning (EF) for school adjustment, little longitudinal work has formally examined developmental change in EF during the early school years. Based on a sample of 106 mother-child dyads, the current longitudinal study investigated patterns of growth in child performance on three executive tasks between kindergarten (Mage  = 6 years) and Grade 3 (Mage  = 9 years), and the predictive role of earlier mother-child attachment security in these patterns. The results suggest that early elementary school is a period of significant developmental improvement in child EF, although child performance on different EF tasks follows distinct trajectories across time. The study also provides evidence for a sustained relation between children's early attachment security and their ongoing acquisition of executive skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Infants' pointing gestures are a critical predictor of early vocabulary size. However, it remains unknown precisely how pointing relates to word learning. The current study addressed this question in a sample of 108 infants, testing one mechanism by which infants' pointing may influence their learning. In Study 1, 18-month-olds, but not 12-month-olds, more readily mapped labels to objects if they had first pointed toward those objects than if they had referenced those objects via other communicative behaviors, such as reaching or gaze alternations. In Study 2, when an experimenter labeled a not pointed-to-object, 18-month-olds' pointing was no longer related to enhanced fast mapping. These findings suggest that infants' pointing gestures reflect a readiness and, potentially, a desire to learn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a description of how an interdisciplinary network of academic researchers, community-based programs, parents, and state agencies have joined together to design, test, and scale a suite of innovative intervention strategies rooted in new knowledge about the biology of adversity. Through a process of cocreation, collective pilot testing, and the support of a measurement and evaluation hub, the Washington Innovation Cluster is using rapid cycle iterative learning to elucidate differential impacts of interventions designed to build child and caregiver capacities and address the developmental consequences of socioeconomic disadvantage. Key characteristics of the Innovation Cluster model are described and an example is presented of a video-coaching intervention that has been implemented, adapted, and evaluated through this distinctive collaborative process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mind in the Making and Vroom are partner initiatives that exemplify a unique "civic science" approach to "bringing developmental science into the world." Mind in the Making offers families and professionals working with children 0-8 access to developmental research, by engaging them in an active process of professional development and community outreach. Vroom is an outreach and communication initiative that brings "brain building basics" to communities, inviting parents to participate in the science of early learning through partnerships with trusted entities. These initiatives use collaborative, iterative processes in disseminating findings and implications of child development research. Preliminary evidence shows early promise of these initiatives to help promote engaged learning and life skills based on executive function in adults and children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies have suggested that language and executive function (EF) are strongly associated. Indeed, the two are difficult to separate, and it is particularly difficult to determine whether one skill is more dependent on the other. Deafness provides a unique opportunity to disentangle these skills because in this case, language difficulties have a sensory not cognitive basis. In this study, deaf (n = 108) and hearing (n = 125) children (age 8 years) were assessed on language and a wide range of nonverbal EF tasks. Deaf children performed significantly less well on EF tasks, even controlling for nonverbal intelligence and speed of processing. Language mediated EF skill, but the reverse pattern was not evident. Findings suggest that language is key to EF performance rather than vice versa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pictorial symbols such as photographs, drawings, and maps are ubiquitous in modern cultures. Nevertheless, it remains unclear how children relate these symbols to the scenes that they represent. The present work investigates 4-year-old children's (N = 144) sensitivity to extended surface layouts and objects when using drawings of a room to find locations in that room. Children used either extended surfaces or objects when interpreting drawings, but they did not combine these two types of information to disambiguate target locations. Moreover, children's evaluations of drawings depicting surfaces or objects did not align with their use of such information in those drawings. These findings suggest that pictures of all kinds serve as media in which children deploy symbolic spatial skills flexibly and automatically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children in all cultures readily engage in artistic activities, yet the arts (dance, drama, drawing, and music) have traditionally been marginal topics in the discipline of developmental science. We argue that developmental psychologists cannot afford to ignore such naturalistic activities that involve so many basic phenomena-attention, engagement, motivation, emotion regulation, understanding of others, and so on. Despite historical issues with research methodologies and overdrawn conclusions, a current wave of methodologically rigorous studies shows the depth of arts learning, as well as how arts engagement can be harnessed for transfer to other skills. Here, we present 21 exemplary research case studies, covering an age range of 18 months to 17 years old and discuss how the arts are no more difficult to study than other real-world developmental phenomena and deserve a thorough examination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children's developing reasoning skills are better understood within the context of their social and cultural lives. As part of a research-museum partnership, this article reports a study exploring science-relevant conversations of 82 families, with children between 3 and 11 years, while visiting a children's museum exhibit about mammoth bones, and in a focused one-on-one exploration of a "mystery object." Parents' use of a variety of types of science talk predicted children's conceptual engagement in the exhibit, but interestingly, different types of parent talk predicted children's engagement depending on the order of the two activities. The findings illustrate the importance of studying children's thinking in real-world contexts and inform creation of effective real-world science experiences for children and families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Educare is a birth to age 5 early education program designed to reduce the achievement gap between children from low-income families and their more economically advantaged peers through high-quality center-based programming and strong school-family partnerships. This study randomly assigned 239 children (< 19 months) from low-income families to Educare or a business-as-usual control group. Assessments tracked children 1 year after randomization. Results revealed significant differences favoring treatment group children on auditory and expressive language skills, parent-reported problem behaviors, and positive parent-child interactions. Effect sizes were in the modest to medium range. No effects were evident for observer-rated child behaviors or parent-rated social competence. The overall results add to the evidence that intervening early can set low-income children on more positive developmental courses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children living in low-income households face elevated risks of behavioral problems, but the impact of absolute and relative income to this risk remains unexplored. Using the U.K. Millennium Cohort Study data, longitudinal associations between Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire scores and absolute household income, distance from the regional median and mean income, and regional income rank were examined in 3- to 12-year-olds (n = 16,532). Higher absolute household incomes were associated with lower behavioral problems, while higher income rank was associated with lower behavioral problems only at the highest absolute incomes. Higher absolute household incomes were associated with lower behavioral problems among children in working households, indicating compounding effects of income and socioeconomic advantages. Both absolute and relative incomes therefore appear to influence behavioral problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study introduces a peri-urban context of poverty to the study of child development in Africa in contrast to the more typical assessments in middle-class and rural contexts. Spot observations were used to assess universal caregiving behaviors toward seventy-six 3-month-old infants. Results show that middle-class infants experienced distal parenting behaviors instantiated by mothers, whereas rural children experienced proximal parenting practices in interactions with others. Infants growing up in poverty had mothers and other caretakers involved at mostly low levels. They experienced low levels of body contact, body stimulation, and object stimulation, and high levels of face-to-face positions. The study indicates that caregiving in the context of poverty does not necessarily follow familiar pathways and needs to be contextualized accordingly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study used short-term longitudinal data to examine the contributions of democratic teaching practices (e.g., the Developmental Designs approach) and equitable school climate to civic engagement attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors among 515 Black and Latino middle school students (47.9% male). Concurrent experiences of democratic homeroom and classroom practices, and equitable school climate were associated with higher scores on each civic engagement component. The relation between classroom practices and civic attitudes was more robust when school climate was seen as more equitable. Longitudinally, homeroom practices and equitable school climate predicted higher civic attitudes 1 year later. Discussion focuses on civic attitudes and future research on school experiences that support civic engagement among youth of color. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article tests a longitudinal model of the antecedents and consequences of changes in identification with indigenous (Mapuche) among indigenous and nonindigenous youth in Chilean school contexts over a 6-month period (633 nonindigenous and 270 Mapuche students, Mages  = 12.47 and 12.80 years, respectively). Results revealed that in-group norms supporting contact and quality of intergroup contact at Time 1 predicted student's changes in Mapuche identification at Time 2, which in turn predicted changes in support for adoption of Chilean culture and maintenance of Mapuche culture at Time 2; some of the relationships between these variables were found to be moderated by age and ethnicity. Conceptual and policy implications are addressed in the Discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effective management of one's reputation is an important social skill, but little is known about how it develops. This study seeks to bridge the gap by examining how children communicate about their own good deeds, among 7- to 11-year-olds in both China and Canada (total N = 378). Participants cleaned a teacher's messy office in her absence, and their responses were observed when the teacher returned. Only the Chinese children showed an age-related increase in modesty by choosing to falsely deny their own good deeds. This modest behavior was uniquely predicted by Chinese children's evaluations of modesty-related lies. The results suggest that culture-specific socialization processes influence the way children communicate with authority figures about prosocial deeds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unlabelled: Teleological reasoning involves the assumption that entities exist for a purpose (giraffes have long necks for reaching leaves). This study examines how teleological reasoning relates to cultural context, by studying teleological reasoning in 61 Quechua-speaking Peruvian preschoolers (Mage  = 5.3 years) and adults in an indigenous community, compared to 72 English-speaking U.S. preschoolers (Mage  = 4.9 years) and university students. Data were responses to open-ended "why" questions ("Why is that mountain tall?"). Teleological explanations about nonliving natural kinds were more frequent for children than adults, and for Quechua than U.S.Participants: However, changes with age were importantly distinct from differences corresponding to cultural variation. Developmental and cultural differences in teleological explanations may reflect causal analysis of the features under consideration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The validity of the Emotional Availability (EA) sensitivity scale was examined in Singapore. Participants were mainly from middle-class families of Chinese, Malay, Indian, and "Other" ethnic groups. Study 1 involved 30 mother-child dyads (children aged 4-6). Scores on EA sensitivity and the Maternal Behavior Q-set were highly correlated, suggesting convergent validity. In Study 2 (164 mother-child dyads), criterion validity was tested by the associations between EA sensitivity and children's vocabulary and likability by peers. Unlike findings from similar studies conducted in the United States, EA sensitivity was negatively correlated with children's likability by female peers, suggesting that measures developed in Western contexts may not be fully applicable locally, or that the meaning of sensitivity may vary across cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The cultural specificity of action prediction was assessed in 8-month-old Chinese and Swedish infants. Infants were presented with an actor eating with a spoon or chopsticks. Predictive goal-directed gaze shifts were examined using eye tracking. The results demonstrate that Chinese infants only predict the goal of eating actions performed with chopsticks, whereas Swedish infants exclusively predict the goal of eating actions performed with a spoon. Infants in neither culture predicted the goal of object manipulation actions (e.g., picking up food) performed with a spoon or chopsticks. The results support the view that multiple processes (both visual/cultural learning and motor-based direct matching processes) facilitate goal prediction during observation of other peoples' actions early in infancy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]