Selective Imitation of In‐Group Over Out‐Group Members in 14‐Month‐Old Infants

Recent research has shown that infants are more likely to engage with in‐group over out‐group members. However, it is not known whether infants' learning is influenced by a model's group membership. This study investigated whether 14‐month‐olds (N = 66) selectively imitate and adopt the preferences of in‐group versus out‐group members. Infants watched an adult tell a story either in their native language (in‐group) or a foreign language (out‐group). The adult then demonstrated a novel action (imitation task) and chose 1 of 2 objects (preference task). Infants did not show selectivity in the preference task, but they imitated the in‐group model more faithfully than the out‐group model. This suggests that cultural learning is beginning to be truly cultural by 14 months of age.     

Knowing When to Be “Rational”: Flexible Economic Decision Making and Executive Function in Preschool Children

Failure to delay gratification may not indicate poor control or irrationality, but might be an adaptive response. Two studies investigated 3.5‐ and 4.5‐year‐old children's ability to adapt their delay and saving behavior when their preference (e.g., to delay or not delay) became nonadaptive. In Study 1 (N = 140), children's delay preference was associated with a risk of losing rewards. In Study 2 (N = 142), children's saving preference was associated with an inability to play an attractive game. Whereas baseline delaying and saving preferences were unrelated to a standardized executive function measure, children who switched to their nonpreferred choice scored higher, suggesting flexibility of decision‐making may be a more meaningful dependent variable than baseline performance in developmental research on self‐control.     

Waiting for the Second Treat: Developing Culture‐Specific Modes of Self‐Regulation

The development of self‐regulation has been studied primarily in Western middle‐class contexts and has, therefore, neglected what is known about culturally varying self‐concepts and socialization strategies. The research reported here compared the self‐regulatory competencies of German middle‐class (N = 125) and rural Cameroonian Nso preschoolers (N = 76) using the Marshmallow test (Mischel, 2014). Study 1 revealed that 4‐year‐old Nso children showed better delay‐of‐gratification performance than their German peers. Study 2 revealed that culture‐specific maternal socialization goals and interaction behaviors were related to delay‐of‐gratification performance. Nso mothers’ focus on hierarchical relational socialization goals and responsive control seems to support children's delay‐of‐gratification performance more than German middle‐class mothers’ emphasis on psychological autonomous socialization goals and sensitive, child‐centered parenting.     

The Role of Competitive and Cooperative Norms in the Development of Deviant Evaluations

The present study examined how peer group norms influence children's evaluations of deviant ingroup members. Following the manipulation of competitive or cooperative norms, participants (children, M_age = 8.69; adolescents, M_age = 13.81; adults, M_age = 20.89; n = 263) evaluated deviant ingroup members from their own and the group's perspective. Children rated cooperative deviancy positively and believed their group would do the same. Adolescents and adults believed that their group would negatively evaluate cooperative deviancy when their group supported a competitive allocation strategy. Reasoning varied based on norm and participants’ agreement with deviancy. Understanding an ingroup may not be favorable toward a cooperative deviant in a competitive context is a developmental challenge requiring the coordination of social and moral norms.     

The Influence of First‐Hand Testimony and Hearsay on Children's Belief in the Improbable

Children (3.5–8.5 years; n = 105) heard claims about the occurrence of improbable or impossible events, then were asked whether the events could really happen. Some claims were based on informants' first‐hand observations and others were hearsay. A baseline group (n = 56) reported their beliefs about these events without hearing testimony. Neither first‐hand claims nor hearsay influenced beliefs about impossible events, which remained low across the age range. Hearsay (but not first‐hand claims) did influence beliefs about improbable events. Preschoolers expressed greater belief following hearsay, compared to their beliefs following first‐hand claims and compared to the baseline group's beliefs. By contrast, older children expressed less belief following hearsay, compared to their beliefs following first‐hand claims and compared to the baseline group's beliefs.     

“These Pretzels Are Making Me Thirsty”: Older Children and Adults Struggle With Induced‐State Episodic Foresight

We explored children's and adults’ ability to disengage from current physiological states when forecasting future desires. In Study 1, 8‐ to 13‐year‐olds and adults (N = 104) ate pretzels (to induce thirst) and then predicted and explained what they would want tomorrow, pretzels or water. Demonstrating life‐span continuity, approximately 70% of participants, regardless of age, chose water and referenced current thirst as their rationale. Individual differences in working memory and undergraduate grade point average were positively related to performance on the pretzel task. In Study 2, we obtained baseline preferences from adults (N = 35) and confirmed that, prior to consuming pretzels, people do not anticipate wanting water more than pretzels the next day. Together, these findings indicate that both children and adults are tethered to the present when forecasting their future desires.     

Infants’ and Young Children's Imitation of Linguistic In‐Group and Out‐Group Informants

Although children can use social categories to intelligently select informants, children's preference for in‐group informants has not been consistently demonstrated across age and context. This research clarifies the extent to which children use social categories to guide learning by presenting participants with a live or video‐recorded action demonstration by a linguistic in‐group and/or out‐group model. Participants’ (N = 104) propensity to imitate these actions was assessed. Nineteen‐month‐olds did not selectively imitate the actions of the in‐group model in live contexts, though in‐group preferences were found after watching the demonstration on video. Three‐year‐olds selectively imitated the actions demonstrated by the in‐group member regardless of context. These results indicate that in‐group preferences have a more nuanced effect on social learning than previous research has indicated.     

Challenging the knowledge‐transfer orthodoxy: Knowledge co‐construction in technology‐enhanced learning for children with autism

Experimental intervention studies constitute the current dominant research designs in the autism education field. Such designs are based on a ‘knowledge‐transfer’ model of evidence‐based practice in which research is conducted by researchers, and is then ‘transferred’ to practitioners to enable them to implement evidence‐based interventions. While these research designs contribute important knowledge, they lead to a gap between what the research evidence may prescribe and what happens in practice, with a concomitant disparity between the priorities of researchers and practitioners. This paper discusses findings from the ESRC‐funded ‘SHAPE’ project, which adopted a different model of evidence‐based practice, focusing on knowledge co‐construction. Pupils (N = 8), teachers (N = 10), a speech and language therapist and a parent in three different school communities investigated creative ways in which children's social communication skills could be enhanced through technology use. Through a participatory methodology, digital stories were used as a method to enable engagement with the practical realities of the classroom and empower practitioners to construct and share their own authentic narratives. Participants articulated precise knowledge about the learning opportunities afforded to them and their pupils through quality interactions that were mediated by the technologies, as evidenced through digital stories. The SHAPE project shows that it is feasible to develop methodologies that enable genuine knowledge co‐construction with school practitioners, parents and pupils. Such co‐construction could offer realistic opportunities for pedagogical emancipation and innovation in evidence‐based practice as an alternative to the currently dominant and narrow model of knowledge transfer.     

Peer Group Norms and Accountability Moderate the Effect of School Norms on Children's Intergroup Attitudes

The present study examined the interactive effects of school norms, peer norms, and accountability on children's intergroup attitudes. Participants (n = 229) aged 5–11 years, in a between‐subjects design, were randomly assigned to a peer group with an inclusion or exclusion norm, learned their school either had an inclusion norm or not, and were accountable to either their peer group, teachers, or nobody. Findings indicated, irrespective of age, that an inclusive school norm was less effective when the peer group had an exclusive norm and children were held accountable to their peers or teachers. These findings support social identity development theory (D. Nesdale, 2004, 2007), which expects both the in‐group peer and school norm to influence children's intergroup attitudes.     

Toddlers Default to Canonical Surface‐to‐Meaning Mapping When Learning Verbs

Previous work has shown that toddlers readily encode each noun in the sentence as a distinct argument of the verb. However, languages allow multiple mappings between form and meaning that do not fit this canonical format. Two experiments examined French 28‐month‐olds' interpretation of right‐dislocated sentences (noun_i‐verb, noun_i) where the presence of clear, language‐specific cues should block such a canonical mapping. Toddlers (N = 96) interpreted novel verbs embedded in these sentences as transitive, disregarding prosodic cues to dislocation (Experiment 1) but correctly interpreted right‐dislocated sentences containing well‐known verbs (Experiment 2). These results suggest that toddlers can integrate multiple cues in ideal conditions, but default to canonical surface‐to‐meaning mapping when extracting structural information about novel verbs in semantically impoverished conditions.     

Children's Judgments and Reasoning About Same‐Sex Romantic Relationships

Children's (5‐, 7‐ to 8‐, and 10‐ to 11‐year‐olds), and adolescents’ (13‐ to 14‐year‐olds) judgments and reasoning about same‐sex romantic relationships were examined (N = 128). Participants’ beliefs about the acceptability and legal regulation of these relationships were assessed, along with their judgments and beliefs about excluding someone because of his or her sexual orientation and the origins of same‐sex attraction. Older participants evaluated same‐sex romantic relationships more positively and used more references to personal choice and justice/discrimination reasoning to support their judgments. Younger participants were less critical of a law prohibiting same‐sex relationships and were more likely to believe it was not acceptable to violate this law. Beliefs about origins of same‐sex attraction showed age‐specific patterns in their associations with evaluations.     

Not All Past Events Are Equal: Biased Attention and Emerging Heuristics in Children's Past‐to‐Future Forecasting

Four‐ to 10‐year‐olds and adults (N = 265) responded to eight scenarios presented on an eye tracker. Each trial involved a character who encounters a perpetrator who had previously enacted positive (P), negative (N), or both types of actions toward him or her in varying sequences (NN, PP, PN, and NP). Participants predicted the character's thoughts about the likelihood of future events, emotion type and intensity, and decision to approach or avoid. All ages made more positive forecasts for PP > NP > PN > NN trials, with differentiation by past experience widening with age. Age‐related increases in weighting the most recent past event also appeared in eye gaze. Individual differences in biased visual attention correlated with verbal judgments. Findings contribute to research on risk assessment, person perception, and heuristics in judgment and decision making.     

“I Know You Don't Know I Know…” Children Use Second‐Order False‐Belief Reasoning for Peer Coordination

Numerous studies have investigated children's abilities to attribute mental states, but few have examined their ability to recruit these abilities in social interactions. Here, 6‐year‐olds (N = 104) were tested on whether they can use first‐ and second‐order false‐belief understanding to coordinate with peers. Children adjusted their decisions in a coordination game in response to either their partner's erroneous belief or their partner's erroneous belief about their own belief—a result that contrasts with previous findings on the use of higher order “theory of mind” (TOM) reasoning at this age. Six‐year‐olds are thus able to use their higher order TOM capacities for peer coordination, which marks an important achievement in becoming competent social collaborators.     

Family Context,Mexican‐Origin Adolescent Mothers' Parenting Knowledge,and Children's Subsequent Developmental Outcomes

This study examined parenting knowledge among Mexican‐origin adolescent mothers (N = 191; M_age = 16.26 years), family contextual factors associated with adolescents' parenting knowledge, and toddlers' (M_age = 2.01 years) subsequent developmental outcomes. Data came from home interviews and direct child assessments. Adolescents both underestimated and overestimated children's developmental timing, and showed differences in their knowledge of specific developmental domains. Instrumental support from mother figures was positively linked to adolescents' knowledge accuracy, whereas emotional support was negatively related to adolescents' knowledge confidence. Furthermore, whereas mother figures' autonomy granting was positively linked to knowledge confidence, psychological control was associated with less accurate adolescent parenting knowledge. Toddlers of adolescents with more accurate knowledge showed positive developmental functioning. Intervention implications are discussed.     

“Everything Happens for a Reason”: Children's Beliefs About Purpose in Life Events

Do children believe that “everything happens for a reason?” That is, do children endorse purpose‐based, teleological explanations for significant life events, as they do for social behavior, artifacts, biological properties, and natural kinds? Across three experiments, 5‐ to 7‐year‐olds (N = 80), 8‐ to 10‐year‐olds (N = 72), and adults (N = 91) chose between teleological and nonteleological accounts of significant life events and judged how helpful those accounts were for understanding an event's cause. Five‐ to 7‐year‐olds favored teleological explanations, but this preference diminished with age. Five‐ to 7‐year‐olds and 8‐ to 10‐year‐olds also found teleological explanations more helpful than did adults. Perceiving purpose in life events may therefore have roots in childhood, potentially reflecting a more general sensitivity to purpose in the social and natural worlds.     

Late Emergence of the First Possession Heuristic: Evidence From a Small‐Scale Culture

Western preschool children often assign ownership based on first possession and some theorists have proposed that this judgment might be an early emerging, innate bias. Five‐ to 9‐year‐olds (n = 112) from a small‐scale group in Kenya (Kikuyu) watched videotaped interactions of two women passing an object. The object's starting position and the women's gestures were varied. Use of the first possession heuristic increased with age, and 8‐ to 9‐year‐olds performed similarly to German 5‐year‐olds (n = 24). Starting position and gestures had no effect. A control study confirmed that 5‐year‐old Kikuyus (n = 20) understood the video material. The findings reveal that the first possession heuristic follows different developmental trajectories cross‐culturally and stress the role of children's sociocultural environment.     

Children's Norm Enforcement in Their Interactions With Peers

This study investigates how children negotiate social norms with peers. In Study 1, 48 pairs of 3‐ and 5‐year‐olds (N = 96) and in Study 2, 48 pairs of 5‐ and 7‐year‐olds (N = 96) were presented with sorting tasks with conflicting instructions (one child by color, the other by shape) or identical instructions. Three‐year‐olds differed from older children: They were less selective for the contexts in which they enforced norms, and they (as well as the older children to a lesser extent) used grammatical constructions objectifying the norms (“It works like this” rather than “You must do it like this”). These results suggested that children's understanding of social norms becomes more flexible during the preschool years.     

Environmental‐Scale Map Use in Middle Childhood: Links to Spatial Skills,Strategies, and Gender

Researchers have shown that young children solve mapping tasks in small spaces, but have rarely tested children's performance in large, unfamiliar environments. In the current research, children (9–10 years; N = 40) explored an unfamiliar campus and marked flags' locations on a map. As hypothesized, better performance was predicted by higher spatial‐test scores, greater spontaneous use of map–space coordinating strategies, and participant sex (favoring boys). Data supported some but not all hypotheses about the roles of specific spatial skills for mapping performance. Data patterns were similar on a computer mapping task that displayed environmental‐scale videos of walks through a park. Patterns of children's mapping errors suggested both idiosyncratic and common mapping strategies that should be addressed in future research and educational interventions.     

Visual Short‐Term Memory for Complex Objects in 6‐ and 8‐Month‐Old Infants

Infants' visual short‐term memory (VSTM) for simple objects undergoes dramatic development: Six‐month‐old infants can store in VSTM information about only a simple object presented in isolation, whereas 8‐month‐old infants can store information about simple objects presented in multiple‐item arrays. This study extended this work to examine the development of infants' VSTM for complex objects during this same period (N = 105). Using the simultaneous streams change detection paradigm, Experiment 1 confirmed the previous developmental trajectory between 6 and 8 months. Experiment 2 showed that doubling the exposure time did not enhance 6‐month‐old infants' change detection, demonstrating that the developmental change is not due to encoding speed. Thus, VSTM for simple and complex objects appears to follow the same developmental trajectory.     

Gender‐Based Relationship Efficacy: Children's Self‐Perceptions in Intergroup Contexts

This research introduces a new construct, gender‐based relationship efficacy, which refers to beliefs about one's ability to relate to own‐ and other‐gender peers. Study 1 investigated 204 fourth graders (M age = 9.56) and confirmed that own‐gender and other‐gender relationship efficacy represent distinguishable aspects of preadolescents' social competency beliefs that are differentially related to outcomes with own‐ and other‐gender peers, including outcome expectancies and friendships with own‐ and other‐gender peers. Study 2 provided further evidence of the distinctiveness of relationship efficacy for own‐ and other‐gender peers among 403 seventh (M age = 12.48) and 453 eighth (M age = 13.50) graders and found gender and age differences. Developmental changes and implications for research on intergroup relationships are discussed.