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Three- and four-year-old children (N=131) were tested for their sensitivity to the accuracy and inaccuracy of informants. Children were presented with one of three conditions. In the Accurate-Inaccurate condition, one informant named objects accurately whereas the other named them inaccurately. In the Accurate-Neutral condition, one informant named objects accurately whereas the other merely drew attention to them. Finally in the Inaccurate-Neutral condition, one informant named objects inaccurately whereas the other merely drew attention to them. In subsequent test trials, 4-year-olds preferred to seek and accept information in a selective fashion across all three conditions, suggesting that they monitor informants for both accuracy and inaccuracy. By contrast, 3-year-olds were selective in the Accurate-Inaccurate and Inaccurate-Neutral conditions but not in the Accurate-Neutral condition, suggesting that they monitor informants only for inaccuracy and take accuracy for granted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are thematic roles linked to verbs in young children as in adults or will children accept any participant in a given role with any verb? To assess early verb comprehension we used typicality ratings with adults, parental questionnaires, and Intermodal Preferential Looking with children. We predicted that children would look at named targets, would initially associate typical action-patient combinations with verbs, and accept atypical pairings as they get older. Results show that 15-month-olds do not understand verbs yet, 18-month-olds look at typical and atypical targets after naming, 24-month-olds demonstrate preferences for typical items only and 3-year-olds (and adults) accept atypical instances. Thus, children seem to start mapping verbs broadly to action-patient combinations, even implausible ones. Around 24 months they show restricted naming and accept only typical scenes congruent with their experience. By 3 years they have gained independence from this typicality-guided strategy and show adult-like behaviour in accepting even unusual pairings as fitting the verb. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: To determine whether fenestrated stent-grafts provide better stability to resist migration than standard non-fenestrated stent-grafts.Methods: Truncated fenestrated stent-grafts with a single fenestration were deployed in bovine aortic segments with a side branch. Balloon-expandable stents were then delivered into the branches. Similarly, standard stent-grafts of the same dimensions were deployed for comparison. The aorta was pressurized to achieve stent-graft oversizing of 5%, 10%, or 20%. The force required to cause distal migration was recorded by a digital force gauge attached to the stent-graft.Results: Displacement of the stent-grafts occurred in 2 distinct phases: an initial yield during which the barbs embedded in the aortic wall and a final displacement leading to significant migration and dislodgement of the device. The displacement force that initiated each phase was dependent upon the degree of oversizing of the stent-graft relative to the aortic diameter. For 5%, 10%, and 20% oversizing, the mean displacement forces in the initial displacement phase were 3.39+/-0.37, 4.32+/-0.63, and 7.69+/-1.18 N, respectively, in non-fenestrated grafts and 10.48+/-1.23, 11.45+/-1.48, 12.12+/-1.42 N in fenestrated grafts. The displacement forces in the final displacement phase were 8.10+/-0.92, 10.76+/-1.74, and 16.82+/-0.92 N for non-fenestrated and 22.56+/-1.60, 28.24+/-1.56, and 33.01+/-1.75 N for fenestrated stent-grafts. The differences in displacement forces between standard and fenestrated stent-grafts were significant for both phases (p<0.001) at all oversizing levels.Conclusion: Improvement in fixation strength was noted with increasing stent-graft oversizing of up to 20%. Fenestrated stent-grafts offer higher ultimate fixation compared to standard devices. However, the ultimate fixation strength was not recruited until an initial phase of short migration occurred as the barbs engaged. While this movement is inconsequential with standard stent-grafts, it has the potential to crush the stents placed into aortic side branches with fenestrated endografts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: To compare differences in the applicability and incidence of postoperative adverse events among stent-grafts used for repair of infrarenal aortic aneurysms. Methods: An analysis of 6787 patients from the EUROSTAR Registry database was conducted to compare aneurysm morphological features, patient characteristics, and postoperative events for the AneuRx, EVT/Ancure, Excluder, Stentor, Talent, and Zenith devices versus the Vanguard device (control) and each other. Annual incidence rates of complications were determined, and risks were compared using the Cox proportional hazards analysis. Results: The annual incidence rates were: device-related endoleak (types I and III) 6% (range 4%-10%), type II endoleak 5% (range 0.3%-11%), migration 3% (range 0.5%-5%), kinking 2% (range 1%-5%), occlusion 3% (range 1%-5%), rupture 0.5% (range 0%-1%), and all-cause mortality 7% (range 5%-8%). After adjustment for factors influencing outcome, AneuRx, Excluder, Talent, and Zenith devices were associated with a lower risk of migration, kinking, occlusion, and secondary intervention compared to the Vanguard device. Significant increased risk for conversion (EVT/Ancure) and reduced risk of aneurysm rupture (AneuRx and Zenith) and all-cause mortality (Excluder) were found compared to the Vanguard device. Conclusions: Significant differences exist between stent-grafts of different labels in terms of applicability and complications during intermediate to long-term follow-up. Since each stent-graft has its drawbacks, no single label can be identified as the best. It is reassuring that developments in stent-grafts indeed result in better performance than the early stent-grafts. However, a single device incorporating all the perceived improvements should still be pursued. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research with adults has suggested that they readily understand conditional rules that include a deontic or prescriptive element. The possibility that young children might also understand such conditional rules when they are embedded in the context of an exchange agreement was explored in three studies. Children 3-7 years of age listened to stories in which two protagonists agreed to an exchange of mutual benefit. Children tested both in Britain and Nepal were accurate in identifying (1) when either protagonist had reneged on the agreement and (2) when both protagonists had kept the agreement. The findings indicate that young children are sensitive to the obligations that stem from an exchange agreement even if it is made between equals rather than imposed by adult authority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given that children do not always trust gossip, do they spontaneously check what they are told? We provided 5- (N = 32) and 6-year olds (N = 32) with gossip concerning characters in a cartoon they were watching, and examined whether they verified the gossip by actively re-watching the relevant episodes. Six-year olds were more likely to verify gossip than 5-year olds. When gossip targeted their favourite characters, children were more likely to verify negative when compared with positive gossip. However, when gossip targeted children's disliked characters, they showed no such valence bias. These results indicate that children's verification of gossip increases with age, and they evaluate claims selectively., (© 2024 British Psychological Society. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

When presented with surprising claims, older children investigate such claims more often than younger children. The present study tests whether older children (6-7-year-olds) are more skeptical than younger children (4-5-year-olds) about surprising claims that lack supporting evidence because they expect informants to provide evidence for them. To test this hypothesis, we presented 140 4-7-year-old children (47-96 months, 46.4% girls, 53.6% boys, 86.4% with at least one parent who completed a BA degree, 50% parents with income above median) with a series of vignettes. In each vignette, the protagonist wanted to accomplish a task and needed to select the most appropriate object for that task. Before deciding which object to use, the protagonist heard a surprising claim about one of the object's properties, presented with or without supporting evidence. For example, in the supporting explanation condition, the informant stated that the smallest object was the heaviest and that they knew because they had lifted the objects. Children were then asked whether the protagonist knew which object to use and why. Contrary to expectation, children across all ages typically indicated that the protagonist had sufficient knowledge, regardless of whether an informant provided supporting evidence or not. However, with increasing age, children became more skeptical of both supported and unsupported surprising claims and increasingly stated that the protagonist should not select the object suggested by the informant. Finally, when asked to justify this judgment, older children were more likely than younger to express skepticism toward the claims, especially when presented without supporting evidence. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

An insight is a moment of sudden understanding followed by characteristic feelings of suddenness, positive affect, certainty, and ease, commonly known as an aha experience. Despite evidence from studies with adults that aha experiences benefit learning, little systematic research on children's aha experiences exists. The present study asks how children understand and experience insight. We presented a community sample of 160 children (age: 4-8 years, 47% girls, 51% boys, 2% nonbinary) with an illustrated clues task inspired by the Remote Associate Test, a task commonly used to study insight in adults. In this task, children saw three clues and were asked to find a solution word that was associated with the three clues. Self-reported and observed aha experiences were recorded, along with children's solution accuracy and confidence. Children also answered a set of questions to assess their understanding of aha experiences. We found that although the number of aha experiences remained stable across age, there was a clear developmental increase in the understanding of aha experiences. Children's ability to recognize their own aha experiences as well as their general understanding of the aha concept increased with age. This suggests a lag between the occurrence of children's aha experiences and their understanding of such experiences; children first have aha experiences and later develop an understanding of those experiences. Aha experiences were associated with higher accuracy, but not with higher confidence ratings. Observed aha experiences, but not self-reported aha experiences, predicted increased motivation. Our findings are in line with the literature on metacognitive development and the distinction between the experience and the understanding of emotion. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Understanding why individuals are more confident of the existence of invisible scientific phenomena (e.g., oxygen) than invisible religious phenomena (e.g., God) remains a puzzle. Departing from conventional explanations linking ontological beliefs to direct experience, we introduce a model positing that testimony predominantly shapes beliefs in both scientific and religious domains. Distinguishing direct experience (personal observation) from cultural input (testimony-based evidence), we argue that even apparently direct experiences often stem from others' testimony. Our analysis indicates that variability in direct experience cannot explain belief disparities between science and religion, within each domain, or across cultures. Instead, variability in testimony is the primary driver of ontological beliefs. We present developmental evidence for testimony-based beliefs and elucidate the mechanisms underlying their impact., Competing Interests: Declaration of interests No interests are declared., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Introduction: In accordance with ADP 6-22-001 and ATP 6-22.1, counseling is the process routinely executed by Army leaders to develop, mentor, and coach subordinate Soldiers and Army civilians within their organization. When implemented effectively, the counseling process can be utilized to produce capable, resilient, and satisfied subordinates who are prepared and motivated to meet mission-essential responsibilities. Training opportunities that specifically focus on optimizing this key leader competence, particularly with non-commissioned officers, are limited. The Directorate of Prevention, Resilience and Readiness (Headquarters, Department of the Army, G-9) offers a specific training, the Counseling Enhancement Workshop, and requested an evaluation to determine the effectiveness of the current training and identify opportunities for improvement., Materials and Methods: A longitudinal 360-degree approach was deployed as a common multisource methodology intended to produce triangulated feedback from participants, as well as their subordinates and supervisors. Quantitative surveys and qualitative structured interviews were conducted. Performance psychology professional facilitators who train this workshop were also administered a questionnaire to capture instructional feedback. Measures include a knowledge assessment of the workshop content, Counseling Self-Efficacy Survey, as well as original measures related to the workshop experience. Completed written developmental counseling forms and observations from the evaluation team were also reviewed to ensure fidelity of the training implementation and delivery. The current study reports on survey responses from participants and facilitators., Results: Results suggested a strong and positive correlation between the pre- and post-workshop Counseling Self-Efficacy Scale. Because of a small sample size, data were analyzed as planned but interpreted with caution because of limited validity. There was a significant increase between the pre- and post-tests knowledge comprehension test scores. Facilitators reported confidence in teaching resilience skills, but not coaching Soldiers to apply those skills as part of the developmental counseling process., Conclusions: The Army counseling process can be utilized to produce capable, resilient, and satisfied subordinates who are prepared and motivated to meet mission-essential responsibilities. Quantitative results on the content of the CEW present opportunities for meaningful training that increases leaders' confidence in delivering counseling sessions, as well as mastering specific skills that benefit the subordinate Soldier and improve unit health. Furthermore, performance psychology professionals provided feedback on focus areas to meet the instructional objective of the training more efficiently and effectively. Ultimately, the counseling process is considered the most important tool available to current leaders to build the capacity of future leaders and an investment in the training to enhance these skills will provide great returns to the U.S. Army as a whole., (Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Association of Military Surgeons of the United States 2024. This work is written by (a) US Government employee(s) and is in the public domain in the US.)

Children and adults express greater confidence in the existence of invisible scientific as compared to invisible religious entities. To further examine this differential confidence, 5- to 11-year-old Turkish children and their parents (N = 174, 122 females) from various regions in Türkiye, a country with an ongoing tension between secularism and religion, were tested in 2021 for their belief in invisible entities. Participants expressed more confidence in the existence of scientific than religious entities. For scientific entities, children justified their belief primarily by elaborating on the properties of the entity, rather than referring to the testimonial source of their judgment. This pattern was reversed for religious entities, arguably, highlighting the role of polarization in shaping the testimony children typically hear., (© 2024 The Authors. Child Development © 2024 Society for Research in Child Development.)

Trust and honesty are essential for human interactions. Philosophers since antiquity have long posited that they are causally linked. Evidence shows that honesty elicits trust from others, but little is known about the reverse: does trust lead to honesty? Here we experimentally investigated whether trusting young children to help can cause them to become more honest (total N = 328 across five studies; 168 boys; mean age, 5.94 years; s.d., 0.28 years). We observed kindergarten children's cheating behaviour after they had been entrusted by an adult to help her with a task. Children who were trusted cheated less than children who were not trusted. Our study provides clear evidence for the causal effect of trust on honesty and contributes to understanding how social factors influence morality. This finding also points to the potential of using adult trust as an effective method to promote honesty in children., (© 2024. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.)

Chinese and American children aged 5-11 years (total N = 144) heard two child informants make conflicting empirical claims about each of 4 scenarios. For example, one informant claimed that a ball would float when dropped in water whereas the other informant claimed that it would sink. Children were asked to judge whether each informant could be right, and to justify their overall judgment. In both samples, there was a change with age. Older children often said that each informant could be right whereas younger children, especially in China, were more likely to say that only one informant could be right. Nevertheless, in the wake of decisive empirical evidence (e.g., the ball was shown to sink when dropped in water), almost all children, irrespective of age, drew appropriate conclusions about which of the two informants had been right. Thus, with increasing age, children differ in their prospective - but not in their retrospective - appraisal of empirical disagreement. Absent decisive evidence, older children are more likely than younger children to suspend judgment by acknowledging that either of two conflicting claims could be right. We argue that children's tendency to suspend judgment is linked to their developing awareness of empirical uncertainty, as expressed both in the justifications they give when judging the disagreement and in their own beliefs about the scenarios. Implications for children's understanding of disagreement are discussed., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest We have no conflicts of interests to disclose., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Research has documented the critical role played by the early home environment in children's mathematical development in Western contexts. Yet little is known about how Chinese parents support their preschoolers' development of math skills. The Chinese context is of particular interest because Chinese children outperform their Western counterparts in math, even early in development. The current study sought to fill this gap by examining a sample of 90 families of 4- and 5-year-olds from mainland China. Parental support-as measured by the frequency of parent-child engagement in home activities as well as parent number talk-and parents' role in children's numeracy skills were investigated. Results indicate wide variation among parents in both types of support. Frequency of engagement in formal numeracy activities, including counting objects and reading number story books, was related to children's knowledge of cardinality. A principal components analysis did not identify informal numeracy activities as a distinct home activity component, likely due to the infrequent occurrences of game-like numeracy activities among the Chinese families. Instead, a structured activity component emerged (e.g., playing musical instruments) and was positively related to children's arithmetic skills. Diversity, but not quantity, of parent number talk was related to children's symbolic magnitude understanding. The distinctive relationships between specific parental measures and child outcomes speak to the need for nuanced identification of home environment factors that are beneficial to particular math competencies. The findings also suggest cultural variations in the mechanisms that support children's mathematical development, highlighting the merits of investigating this topic in non-Western contexts., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

The ability to engage in counterfactual thinking (reason about what else could have happened) is critical to learning, agency, and social evaluation. However, not much is known about how individual differences in counterfactual reasoning may play a role in children's social evaluations. In the current study, we investigate how prompting children to engage in counterfactual thinking about positive moral actions impacts children's social evaluations. Eighty-seven 4-8-year-olds were introduced to a character who engaged in a positive moral action (shared a sticker with a friend) and asked about what else the character could have done with the sticker (counterfactual simulation). Children were asked to generate either a high number of counterfactuals (five alternative actions) or a low number of counterfactuals (one alternative action). Children were then asked a series of social evaluation questions contrasting that character with one who did not have a choice and had no alternatives (was told to give away the sticker to his friend). Results show that children who generated selfish counterfactuals were more likely to positively evaluate the character with choice than children who did not generate selfish counterfactuals, suggesting that generating counterfactuals most distant from the chosen action (prosociality) leads children to view prosocial actions more positively. We also found age-related changes: as children got older, regardless of the type of counterfactuals generated, they were more likely to evaluate the character with choice more positively. These results highlight the importance of counterfactual reasoning in the development of moral evaluations. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: Older children were more likely to endorse agents who choose to share over those who do not have a choice. Children who were prompted to generate more counterfactuals were more likely to allocate resources to characters with choice. Children who generated selfish counterfactuals more positively evaluated agents with choice. Comparable to theories suggesting children punish willful transgressors more than accidental transgressors, we propose children also consider free will when making positive moral evaluations., (© 2023 The Authors. Developmental Science published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

What happens when children have formed an impression of a peer based on prior gossip, but later learn from direct observation that the gossip is untrue? We interviewed seventy 5- and 6-year-old children in Zhejiang, China. They first heard conflicting positive and negative gossip about an absent third party, and subsequently learned which piece of gossip was true. Initially, both 5- and 6-year-old children tended to endorse the positive rather than the negative gossip. However, when they learned about the inaccuracy of the positive gossip based on their own direct observation, 6-year-old children subsequently doubted it, whereas 5-year-old children showed no such shift. Taken together, the results show that when children decide what gossip to believe, they are initially swayed by its valence but with age they increasingly weigh gossip in relation to their own direct observation., (© 2023 British Psychological Society.)

Across cultures, studies report more confidence in the existence of unobservable scientific phenomena, such as germs, as compared to unobservable religious phenomena, such as angels. We investigated a potential cultural mechanism for the transmission of confidence in the existence of invisible entities. Specifically, we asked whether parents in societies with markedly different religious profiles-Iran and China-signal differential confidence across the domains of science and religion during unmoderated conversations with their children (N = 120 parent-child dyads in total; 5- to 11-year-olds). The results revealed that parents used fewer lexical cues to uncertainty when discussing scientific phenomena, as compared to religious phenomena. Unsurprisingly, this cross-domain distinction was observed among majority belief, secular parents in China (Study 2). More importantly, however, the same pattern was observed among parents in Iran, a highly religious society (Study 1), as well as among minority belief, religious parents in China (Study 2). Thus, adults in markedly different belief communities spontaneously express less confidence in religious, as compared to scientific, invisible entities in naturalistic conversation. These findings contribute to theories on the role of culture and testimony in the development of beliefs about unobservable phenomena., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

We analyzed efficacy of a centralized surveillance infection prevention (CSIP) program in a healthcare system on healthcare-associated infection (HAI) rates amid the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. HAI rates were variable in CSIP and non-CSIP facilities. Central-line-associated bloodstream infection (CLABSI), C. difficile infection (CSI), and surgical-site infection (SSI) rates were negatively correlated with COVID-19 intensity in CSIP facilities., Competing Interests: The authors report no conflicts of interest., (© The Author(s) 2023.)

Individuals are typically happy when engaging in enjoyable activities. But many enjoyable activities could be harmful when engaged in to excess. Do children consider the normative goodness of activity engagement levels when attributing happiness? To examine this question, we presented children with enjoyable activities that are often harmless in moderation but harmful in excess. When told that engaging in their favorite activities at their preferred amount was either normatively good (i.e., harmless and permitted) or normatively bad (i.e., harmful and forbidden), 10- and 11-year-old and 7- and 8-year-old children (Study 1) and even 5-year-old children (Studies 2 and 3 with simplified methods) attributed less happiness when the engagement level was normatively bad than when it was normatively good both to themselves and to another child. Young children also perceived normatively bad engagement as less interesting and pleasurable (Study 3). The findings suggest that children consider the normative goodness of activity engagement (rather than enjoyment alone) when attributing happiness, illuminating how children understand happiness., (Copyright © 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Children's naïve theories about causal regularities enable them to differentiate factual narratives describing real events and characters from fictional narratives describing made-up events and characters (Corriveau, Kim, Schwalen, & Harris, Cognition 113 (2): 213-225, 2009). But what happens when children are consistently presented with accounts of miraculous and causally impossible events as real occurrences? Previous research has shown that preschoolers with consistent exposure to religious teaching tend to systematically judge characters involved in fantastical or religious events as real (Corriveau et al., Cognitive Science, 39 (2), 353-382, 2015; Davoodi et al., Developmental Psychology, 52 (2), 221, 2016). In the current study, we extended this line of work by asking about the scope of the impact of religious exposure on children's reality judgments. Specifically, we asked whether this effect is  domain-general or domain-specific. We tested children in Iran, where regular exposure to uniform religious beliefs might influence children's reasoning about possibility in non-religious domains, in addition to the domain of religion. Children with no or minimal schooling (5- to 6-year-olds) and older elementary school students (9- to 10-year-olds) judged the reality status of different kinds of stories, notably realistic, unusual (but nonetheless realistic), religious, and magical stories. We found that while younger children were not systematic in their judgments, older children often judged religious stories as real but rarely judged magical stories as real. This developmental pattern suggests that the impact of religious exposure on children's reality judgments does not extend beyond their reasoning about divine intervention. Children's justifications for their reality judgments provided further support for this domain-specific influence of religious teaching., (© 2022. The Psychonomic Society, Inc.)

Objective: To develop, implement, and evaluate the effectiveness of a unique centralized surveillance infection prevention (CSIP) program., Design: Observational quality improvement project., Setting: An integrated academic healthcare system., Intervention: The CSIP program comprises senior infection preventionists who are responsible for healthcare-associated infection (HAI) surveillance and reporting, allowing local infection preventionists (LIPs) a greater portion of their time to non-surveillance patient safety activities. Four CSIP team members accrued HAI responsibilities at 8 facilities., Methods: We evaluated the effectiveness of the CSIP program using 4 measures: recovery of LIP time, efficiency of surveillance activities by LIPs and CSIP staff, surveys characterizing LIP perception of their effectiveness in HAI reduction, and nursing leaders' perception of LIP effectiveness., Results: The amount of time spent by LIP teams on HAI surveillance was highly variable, while CSIP time commitment and efficiency was steady. Post-CSIP implementation, 76.9% of LIPs agreed that they spend adequate time on inpatient units, compared to 15.4% pre-CSIP; LIPs also reported more time to allot to non-surveillance activities. Nursing leaders reported greater satisfaction with LIP involvement with HAI reduction practices., Conclusion: CSIP programs are a little-reported strategy to ease burden on LIPs with reallocation of HAI surveillance. The analyses presented here will aid health systems in anticipating the benefit of CSIP programs., Competing Interests: All authors report no conflicts of interest relevant to this article., (© The Author(s) 2023.)

There is extensive research on the development of cheating in early childhood but research on how to reduce it is rare. The present preregistered study examined whether telling young children about a story character's emotional reactions towards cheating could significantly reduce their tendency to cheat (N = 400; 199 boys; Age: 3-6 years). Results showed that telling older kindergarten children about the story character's negative emotional reaction towards rule violation significantly reduced cheating, but telling them about the positive emotional reaction towards rule adherence did not. These results show that children as young as age 5 are able to use information about another child's emotional reaction to guide their own moral behavior. In particular, highlighting another child's negative emotional reaction towards a moral transgression may be an effective way to reduce cheating in early childhood. This finding, along with earlier cheating reduction findings, suggests that although cheating is common in early childhood, simple methods can reduce its occurrence., (© 2022 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Against the proposal that children have a natural disposition for supernatural or religious beliefs, we review the decades-old evidence showing that children typically invoke naturalistic causes-even in the face of unusual outcomes. Instead, we propose that children's tendency to endorse supernatural agents reflects their capacity for cultural learning rather than an inherent inclination to believe in divine powers. We support this argument by reviewing the findings that religious exposure in childhood, not individual cognitive or personality factors, is the major determinant of religiosity in adulthood. We highlight the role of cultural learning in children's endorsement of invisible divine agents by drawing on cross-cultural evidence that children are equally receptive to claims regarding the existence of invisible natural agents. We end by introducing a hypothesis to explain how children come to endorse religious beliefs despite their bias toward naturalistic explanation., (Copyright © 2023. Published by Elsevier Inc.)

We investigated children's information seeking in response to a surprising claim (Study 1, N = 109, 54 Female, Range = 4.02-6.94 years, 49% White, 21% Mixed Ethnicity, 19% Southeast Asian, September 2019-March 2020; Study 2, N = 154, 74 Female, Range = 4.09-7.99, 50% White, 20% Mixed Ethnicity, 17% Southeast Asian, September 2020-December 2020). Relative to younger children, older children more often expressed skepticism about the adult's surprising claims (1-year increase, OR = 2.70) and more often suggested exploration strategies appropriate for testing the specific claim they heard (1-year increase, OR = 1.42). Controlling for age, recommending more targeted exploration strategies was associated with a greater likelihood of expressing skepticism about the adult's claim., (© 2022 The Authors. Child Development © 2022 Society for Research in Child Development.)

Children's ability to reason about junctures leading to two different destinations emerges slowly, with convergent evidence for a conceptual watershed at approximately 4 years. Young children and great apes misrepresent such junctures, planning for only one expected outcome. However, singular possibilities, as opposed to two mutually exclusive possibilities, are readily imagined, shared and acted upon by 2- and 3-year-olds. Analysis of three domains supports this claim. First, 2- and 3-year-olds respond appropriately to pretend spatial displacements enacted for them by a play partner. Second, they not only respond accurately to claims regarding an alleged but unwitnessed spatial displacement, they also ask their interlocutors about the possible whereabouts of missing objects and absent persons. Third, in ordinary conversation, they appropriately mark some of their assertions as possibilities rather than actualities. In summary, although the ability to reason about mutually inconsistent possibilities develops slowly in the preschool years, the ability to imagine and share information about possibilities is evident among 2- and 3-year-olds. Nothing comparable has been observed in great apes. Young children's ability to entertain shared possibilities diverges from that of non-human primates well before any potential watershed at 4 years with respect to the understanding of mutually exclusive possibilities. This article is part of the theme issue 'Thinking about possibilities: mechanisms, ontogeny, functions and phylogeny'.

The relation between empathy and morality is a widely discussed topic. However, previous discussions mainly focused on whether and how empathy influences moral cognition and moral behaviors, with limited attention to the reverse influence of morality on empathy. This review summarized how morality influences empathy by drawing together a number of hitherto scattered studies illustrating the influence of targets' moral characteristics on empathy. To explain why empathy is morally selective, we discuss its ultimate cause, to increase survival rates, and five proximate causes based on similarity, affective bonds, the appraisal of deservingness, dehumanization, and potential group membership. To explain how empathy becomes morally selective, we consider three different pathways (automatic, regulative, and mixed) based on previous findings. Finally, we discuss future directions, including the reverse influence of selective empathy on moral cognition, the moral selectivity of positive empathy, and the role of selective empathy in selective helping and third-party punishment., Competing Interests: Conflict of InterestThe authors declare no conflict of interest., (© The Society for Affective Science 2022. Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.)

Evidence from developmental psychology on children's imagination is currently too limited to support Dubourg and Baumard's proposal and, in several respects, it is inconsistent with their proposal. Although children have impressive imaginative powers, we highlight the complexity of the developmental trajectory as well as the close connections between children's imagination and reality.

Background: The interaction between platelets and cancer cells has been underexplored in solid tumor models that do not metastasize, for example, glioblastoma (GBM) where metastasis is rare. Histologically, it is known that glioma stem cells (GSCs) are found in perivascular and pseudsopalisading regions of GBM, which are also areas of platelet localization. High platelet counts have been associated with poor clinical outcomes in many cancers. While platelets are known to promote the progression of other tumors, mechanisms by which platelets influence GBM oncogenesis are unknown. Here, we aimed to understand how the bidirectional interaction between platelets and GSCs drives GBM oncogenesis., Methods: Male and female NSG mice were transplanted with GSC lines and treated with antiplatelet and anti-thrombin inhibitors. Immunofluorescence, qPCR, and Western blots were used to determine expression of coagulation mechanism in GBM tissue and subsequent GSC lines., Results: We show that GSCs activate platelets by endogenous production of all the factors of the intrinsic and extrinsic coagulation cascades in a plasma-independent manner. Therefore, GSCs produce thrombin resulting in platelet activation. We further demonstrate that the endogenous coagulation cascades of these cancer stem cells are tumorigenic: they activate platelets to promote stemness and proliferation in vitro and pharmacological inhibition delays tumor growth in vivo ., Conclusions: Our findings uncover a specific preferential relationship between platelets and GSCs that drive GBM malignancies and identify a therapeutically targetable novel interaction., (© The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press, the Society for Neuro-Oncology and the European Association of Neuro-Oncology.)

Recent work has probed the developmental mechanisms that promote fair sharing. This work investigated 2.5- to 5.5-year-olds' (N = 316; 52% female; 79% White; data collected 2016-2018) sharing behavior in relation to three cognitive correlates: number knowledge, working memory, and cognitive control. In contrast to working memory and cognitive control, number knowledge was uniquely associated with fair sharing even after controlling for the other correlates and for age. Results also showed a causal effect: After a 5-min counting intervention (vs. a control), children improved their fair sharing behavior from pre-test to post-test. Findings are discussed in light of how social, cognitive, and motivational factors impact sharing behavior., (© 2022 The Authors. Child Development © 2022 Society for Research in Child Development.)

Recent research has shown that a religious upbringing renders children receptive to ordinarily impossible outcomes, but the underlying mechanism for this effect remains unclear. Exposure to religious teachings might alter children's basic understanding of causality. Alternatively, religious exposure might only affect children's religious cognition, not their causal judgments more generally. To test between these possibilities, 6- to 11-year-old children attending either secular ( n = 49, 51% female, primarily White and middle-class) or parochial schools ( n = 42, 48% female, primarily White and middle-class) heard stories in which characters experienced negative outcomes and indicated how those characters could have prevented them. Both groups of children spontaneously invoked interventions consistent with natural causal laws. Similarly, when judging the plausibility of several counterfactual interventions, participants endorsed the intervention consistent with natural laws at high levels, irrespective of schooling. However, children's endorsement of supernatural interventions inconsistent with these laws revealed both group similarities and differences. Although both groups of children judged divine intervention (i.e., via prayer) as more plausible than mental (i.e., via wishing) and magical (i.e., via magical powers) interventions, children receiving religious (vs. secular) schooling were more likely to do so. Moreover, although children with a secular upbringing overwhelmingly chose naturalistic interventions as the most effective, children with a religious upbringing chose divine as well as naturalistic intervention. These results indicate that religious teaching does not alter children's basic understanding of causality but rather adds divine intervention to their repertoire of possible causal factors. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Supporting the central claim that knowledge representation is more basic than belief representation, we focus on the emerging evidence for preverbal infants' active and selective communication based on their representation of both knowledge and ignorance. We highlight infants' ontogenetically early deliberate information seeking and information transmission in the context of active social learning, arguing that these capacities are unique to humans.

Children (N = 278, 34-71 months, 54% girls) were told which of two figurines turned on a music box and also observed empirical evidence either confirming or conflicting with that testimony. Children were then asked to sort novel figurines according to whether they could make the music box work or not. To see whether children would explore which figurine turned on the music box, especially when the observed and testimonial evidence conflicted, children were given access to the music box during their sorting. However, children rarely explored. Indeed, they struggled to disregard the misleading testimony both when sorting the figurines and when asked about a future attempt. In contrast, children who explored the effectiveness of the figurines dismissed the misleading testimony., (© 2021 The Authors. Child Development published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society for Research in Child Development.)

Five- to 11-year-old U.S. children, from either a religious or secular background, judged whether story events could really happen. There were four different types of stories: magical stories violating ordinary causal regularities; religious stories also violating ordinary causal regularities but via a divine agent; unusual stories not violating ordinary causal regularities but with an improbable event; and realistic stories not violating ordinary causal regularities and with no improbable event. Overall, children were less likely to judge that religious and magical stories could really happen than unusual and realistic stories although religious children were more likely than secular children to judge that religious stories could really happen. Irrespective of background, children frequently invoked causal regularities in justifying their judgments. Thus, in justifying their conclusion that a story could really happen, children often invoked a causal regularity, whereas in justifying their conclusion that a story could not really happen, they often pointed to the violation of causal regularity. Overall, the findings show that children appraise the likelihood of story events actually happening in light of their beliefs about causal regularities. A religious upbringing does not impact the frequency with which children invoke causal regularities in judging what can happen, even if it does impact the type of causal factors that children endorse., (© 2021 Cognitive Science Society LLC.)

Within the domains of both science and religion, beliefs in unobservable phenomena - such as bacteria or the soul - are common. Yet given the radically different trajectory of scientific as compared to religious beliefs across human history, it is plausible that the psychological basis for beliefs in these two domains is also different. Indeed, there is evidence from children and adults in various cultures that people have greater confidence in their scientific beliefs than in their religious beliefs. However, when individuals are invited to indicate the basis for their beliefs within each domain, a surprisingly similar pattern of justification is apparent., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Across two experiments, an adult informant presented 220 preschoolers (34-71 months of age) with either a correct claim or an incorrect claim about how to activate a music box by using one of two toy figures. Children were then prompted to explore the figures and to discover whether the informant's claim was correct or incorrect. Children who discovered the claim to be incorrect no longer endorsed it. Moreover, their predictions regarding a new figure's ability to activate the music box were clearly affected by the reliability of the informant's prior claim. Thus, children reassess an informant's incorrect claim about an object in light of later empirical evidence and transfer their conclusions regarding the validity of that claim to subsequent objects., (Copyright © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)