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Selective Trust and Theory of Mind in Brazilian Children: Effects of Culture or Socioeconomic Background? J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2021-01-11 Debora de Hollanda Souza; Sarah Suárez; Melissa Ann Koenig
ABSTRACT The present study was the first to investigate the ability to selectively trust reliable informants in a sample of Brazilian preschool children from two different socioeconomic backgrounds. Ninety-three 3- and 4-year-old children, equally distributed across a low- and medium-SES group, participated. A standard selective trust task was used. Participants also completed the Scale of Theory-of
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The Structure of Processing Speed in Children and Its Impact on Reading J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2021-01-03 Elyssa H. Gerst; Paul T. Cirino; Kelly T. Macdonald; Jeremy Miciak; Hanako Yoshida; Steven P. Woods; M. Cullen Gibbs
ABSTRACT The present study had two aims. First, we set out to evaluate the structure of processing speed in children by comparing five alternative models: two conceptual models (a unitary model, a complexity model) and three methodological models (a stimulus material model, an output response model, and a timing modality model). Second, we then used the resulting models to predict multiple types of
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Self-regulation in Preschool Children: Factor Structure of Different Measures of Effortful Control and Executive Functions J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2021-01-03 Sonja Kälin; Claudia M. Roebers
ABSTRACT Temperamental effortful control (EC) and executive functions (EF) are two frameworks for studying self-regulation in children. Despite stemming from different research traditions, they show many conceptual and theoretical similarities and their corresponding tasks are often used interchangeably. However, little is known about how and whether the two constructs can be distinguished empirically
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Development and Initial Validation of a Scale Measuring Young Children’s Self-Perceptions of Trait Cognitive Control J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2021-01-03 Robbie A. Ross; Dare A. Baldwin
ABSTRACT Cognitive control skills in early life are vital to success throughout the lifespan. Such skills have been positively linked to a host of important short- and long-term outcomes across many diverse domains. Similarly, self-perceptions such as self-efficacy, implicit beliefs about cognition, and self-concept have all been shown to predict meaningful variance in important outcomes like academic
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The Role of Non-symbolic and Symbolic Skills in the Development of Early Numerical Cognition from Preschool to Kindergarten Age J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2020-12-22 Jaccoline E. van ‘t Noordende; Evelyn H. Kroesbergen; Paul P. M. Leseman; M (Chiel). J. M. Volman
ABSTRACT The development of (early) numerical cognition builds on children’s ability to understand and manipulate quantities and numbers. However, previous research did not find conclusive evidence on the role of symbolic and non-symbolic skills in the development of (early) numerical cognition. The aim of the current study was to clarify the relation between different types of non-symbolic quantity
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Children’s Flexible Attention to Numerical and Spatial Magnitudes in Early Childhood J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2020-12-12 Mary Wagner Fuhs; Nadia Tavassolie; Yiqiao Wang; Victoria Bartek; Natalie A. Sheeks; Elizabeth A. Gunderson
ABSTRACT Young children are sensitive to both numerical and spatial magnitude cues early in development, but many questions remain about how children’s attention to magnitudes relates to their early math achievement. In two studies, we tested three hypotheses related to the flexible attention to magnitudes (FAM) account, which suggests that young children’s flexible attention to both numerical and
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The Girl Was Watered by the Flower: Effects of Working Memory Loads on Syntactic Production in Young Children J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2020-12-08 Eryn J. Adams; Nelson Cowan
ABSTRACT Working memory is necessary for a wide variety of cognitive abilities. Developmental work has shown that as working memory capacities increase, so does the ability to successfully perform other cognitive tasks, including language processing. The present work demonstrates the effects of working memory availability on children’s language production. Whereas most of the previous research linking
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Children’s Poverty Exposure and Hot and Cool Executive Functions: Differential Impacts of Parental Financial Strain J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2020-12-07 Erin R. Baker; Rong Huang; Qingyang Liu; Carmela Battista
ABSTRACT Children living in poverty often show delayed cognitive and social development compared with children reared in more affluent environments. However, much of the research focuses on how objective financial strain (e.g. household income) impacts preschoolers’ executive function (EF); little research has considered the impacts of parents’ psychological experience of financial strain. The current
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Intergenerational Features of Math Skills: Symbolic and Non-Symbolic Magnitude Comparison and Written Calculation in Mothers and Children J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2020-11-29 Luca Bernabini; Valentina Tobia; Paola Bonifacci
ABSTRACT In this article, we analyze symbolic and non-symbolic numerical abilities of parents in order to understand whether these are predictors of children’s numerical skills, considering basic symbolic, non-symbolic, and formal math skills (i.e., written calculation). A battery of cognitive and math tasks was administered to a sample of 83 children with established formal school experience (i.e
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Prosocial Behavior: The Role of Theory of Mind and Executive Functions J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2020-10-23 Laura Traverso; Paola Viterbori; Maria Carmen Usai
ABSTRACT This study aimed to investigate the role of theory of mind (ToM) and both cool and hot executive function (EF) in accounting for prosocial behavior. Typically developing children of 3 to 6 years of age (N = 183) were assessed on a battery of EF and ToM tasks, while parents and teachers completed a questionnaire examining the children’s prosocial behavior in everyday situations. Structural
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Children’s Math Anxiety Predicts Their Math Achievement Over and Above a Key Foundational Math Skill J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2020-11-03 Nancy Pantoja; Marjorie W. Schaeffer; Christopher S. Rozek; Sian L. Beilock; Susan C. Levine
ABSTRACT Math anxiety negatively predicts young children’s math achievement. While some researchers have suggested that math anxiety may stem from poor math ability, others have argued that math anxiety occurs at all levels of math ability. An important question is whether math anxiety predicts math achievement over and above foundational math skills. We sought to address this issue by examining whether
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Questions – And Some Answers – About Young Children’s Questions J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2020-10-21 Jamie Jirout; David Klahr
ABSTRACT Question asking plays a fundamental role in learning, and the cognitive development literature contains many studies of specific types of question-asking skills. However, little is known about the developmental course across different aspects of question asking, of which we explore: (a) the ability to ask questions that enable children to solve a specific problem, (b) the ability to ask questions
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Iconic Realism or Representational Disregard? How Young Children and Adults Reason about Pictures and Objects J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2020-09-10 Kristan A. Marchak; Bryana Bayly; Valerie Umscheid; Susan A. Gelman
ABSTRACT When reasoning about a representation (e.g., a toy lion), children often engage in “iconic realism,” whereby representations are reported to have properties of their real-life referents. The present studies examined an inverse difficulty that we dub “representational disregard”: overlooking (i.e., disregarding) a representation’s objective, non-symbolic features. In three experiments (N =
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Advancing Developmental Science via Unmoderated Remote Research with Children J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2020-08-13 Marjorie Rhodes; Michael T. Rizzo; Emily Foster-Hanson; Kelsey Moty; Rachel A. Leshin; Michelle Wang; Josie Benitez; John Daryl Ocampo
This article introduces an accessible approach to implementing unmoderated remote research in developmental science – research in which children and families participate in studies remotely and independently, without directly interacting with researchers. Unmoderated remote research has the potential to strengthen developmental science by: (1) facilitating the implementation of studies that are easily
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Enduring Positivity: Children Of Incarcerated Parents Report More Positive Than Negative Emotions When Thinking about Close Others J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2020-08-10 James P. Dunlea; Redeate G. Wolle; Larisa Heiphetz
Millions of children in the United States experience parental incarceration, yet it is unclear how this experience might shape social cognition. We asked children of incarcerated parents (N = 24) and children whose parents were not incarcerated (N = 58) to describe their parents. Both groups of children also rated the extent to which they agree that they feel positive and, separately, negative emotions
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Object Individuation in the Absence of Kind-specific Surface Features: Evidence for a Primordial Essentialist Stance? J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2020-08-06 Trix Cacchione; Sufi Abbaspour; Hannes Rakoczy
It has been suggested that due to functional similarity, sortal object individuation might be a primordial form of psychological essentialism. For example, the relative independence of identity judgment from perceived surface features is a characteristic of essentialist reasoning. Also, infants engaging in sortal object individuation pay more attention to kind than surface feature information when
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Science Conversations during Family Book Reading with Girls and Boys in Two Cultural Communities J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2020-08-18 Tess A. Shirefley; Claudia L. Castañeda; Joyce Rodriguez-Gutiérrez; Maureen A. Callanan; Jennifer Jipson
Family conversations about science-related topics, including those involving storybook reading, may set the stage for children’s interest in science. We investigated how parents from two cultural backgrounds engaged in science talk while reading a science-related storybook with their preschool-aged daughters and sons. Consistent with our commitment to avoid deficit thinking, our questions focus on
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Children’s Understanding and Use of Four Dimensions of Social Status J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2020-08-07 Elizabeth A. Enright; Daniel J. Alonso; Bella M. Lee; Kristina R. Olson
Beginning early in life, children are exposed to people who differ in social status. In five studies, we investigate whether 3- to 6-year-old children recognize different dimensions of status (i.e., wealth, physical dominance, decision-making power, and prestige) and use these dimensions to inform their social judgments (preferences and resource allocation). Across studies, we found that by age 3,
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Age Affects Strategic But Not Spontaneous Recall in 35- and 46-Month-old Children J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2020-08-13 Trine Sonne; Osman S. Kingo; Dorthe Berntsen; Peter Krøjgaard
It is well documented that young children have difficulties with strategically remembering past events. Recent evidence on event memory in 35- and 46-month-old children suggests that strategic retrieval (yes/no questions) improves with age, whereas spontaneous retrieval is relatively unaffected by age. We here replicate and extend those findings (N = 124): First, a novel free (strategic) recall test
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Patterns of Development in Children’s Scientific Reasoning: Results from a Three-Year Longitudinal Study J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2020-09-08 Ard W. Lazonder; Noortje Janssen; Hannie Gijlers; Amber Walraven
Scientific reasoning refers to the thinking skills involved in conceiving and conducting an investigation. This study examined how proficiency in performing these skills develops during the upper-elementary school years. A sample of 157 children (age 7–10) took a performance-based scientific reasoning test in three consecutive years. Four distinct developmental patterns emerged from their annual test
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Lexical Processing of Nouns and Verbs at 36 Months of Age Predicts Concurrent and Later Vocabulary and School Readiness J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2020-08-26 Ashley Koenig; Sudha Arunachalam; Kimberly J. Saudino
ABSTRACT Children’s lexical processing speed at 18 to 25 months of age has been linked to concurrent and later language abilities. In the current study, we extend this finding to children aged 36 months. Children (N = 126) participated in a lexical processing task in which they viewed two static images on noun trials (e.g., an ear of corn and a hat), or two dynamic video clips on verb trials (e.g.
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Resistance to Gender-Based Rules: Development in Adolescence J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2020-08-23 Victoria Perko; Clare Conry-Murray; Justin Kaluza; Kendra O’Donnell
ABSTRACT To investigate whether adolescents approve of disobedience or lying in response to rules that restrict behavior based on gender, 89 younger (Mage = 11.74) and older (Mage = 16.67) adolescents and emerging adults (Mage = 19.97) judged vignettes wherein a child prefers an activity, but the child’s parents indicate that they are not allowed to participate because the activity is 1) “not for
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Bilingual Infants are More Sensitive to Morally Relevant Social Behavior than Monolingual Infants J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2020-08-20 Leher Singh
ABSTRACT Forming social evaluations of others is a core component of social cognition. In this study, the relationship between bilingual experience and social evaluations was investigated in 8-month-old infants. We compared monolingual and bilingual infants’ responses to third-party interactions where characters performed prosocial and antisocial actions toward a neutral actor. The same prosocial and
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The Different Contribution of Executive Control to Temporal Comparison and Reproduction in Children and Adults J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2020-08-19 Anne-Claire Rattat; Nicolas Chevalier
ABSTRACT The present study investigated the role of executive functions in the development of two aspects of timing: temporal reproduction and comparison. Children aged 7 and 10 years and young adults were asked to either reproduce target durations (i.e., reproduction task) or judge the similarity of two target durations (i.e., comparison task). These temporal tasks were performed in isolation (single-task
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Object Individuation in the Absence of Kind-specific Surface Features: Evidence for a Primordial Essentialist Stance? J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2020-08-06 Trix Cacchione; Sufi Abbaspour; Hannes Rakoczy
It has been suggested that due to functional similarity, sortal object individuation might be a primordial form of psychological essentialism. For example, the relative independence of identity judgment from perceived surface features is a characteristic of essentialist reasoning. Also, infants engaging in sortal object individuation pay more attention to kind than surface feature information when
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Selective Social Belief Revision in Young Children J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2020-07-13 Nadja Miosga; Thomas Schultze; Stefan Schulz-Hardt; Hannes Rakoczy
Recent research has shown that from early in development, children selectively form new beliefs in response to information supplied by others. However, little is known about the development of selective revision of existing beliefs in response to socially conveyed information. Such selective social belief revision has been extensively studied by social psychologists in the context of advice-taking
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Children’s Use of Generic Labels, Discreteness, and Stability to Form a Novel Category J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2020-05-04 Rebecca Peretz-Lange; Paul Muentener
Children hold rich essentialist beliefs about natural and social categories, representing them as discrete (mutually exclusive with sharp boundaries) and stable (with membership remaining constant over an individual’s lifespan). Children use essential categories to make inductive inferences about individuals. How do children determine what categories to consider essential and to use as an inductive
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Exploring the Neural Basis of Selective and Flexible Dimensional Attention: An fNIRS Study J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2020-05-04 Anastasia N. Kerr-German; Aaron T. Buss
Between the ages of 3 and 5, children develop greater control over attention to visual dimensions. Children develop the ability to flexibly shift between visual dimensions and to selectively process specific dimensions of an object. Previous proposals have suggested that selective and flexible attention is developmentally related to one another. However, the relation between flexibility and selectivity
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Children’s Evaluations of Informants and their Surprising Claims in Direct and Overheard Contexts J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2020-04-13 Pearl Han Li; Melissa A. Koenig
Children are known to accept communicated information, even when it contradicts their own judgments. Here, we explored the role of direct address and accuracy in children’s testimonial decisions and socio-moral evaluations of the speaker. After 4-year-old children (N = 100) gave baseline classification responses for four hybrid animals, an adult speaker either directly told the child information that
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Language First: Deaf Children from Deaf Families Spontaneously Anticipate False Beliefs J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2020-04-13 Marek Meristo; Karin Strid
Being connected to other people at the level of inner and unobservable mental states is one of the most essential aspects of a meaningful life, including psychological well-being and successful cooperation. The foundation for this kind of connectedness is our theory of mind (ToM), that is the ability to understand our own and others’ inner experiences in terms of mental states such as beliefs and desires
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Associations of 3-year-olds’ Block-building Complexity with Later Spatial and Mathematical Skills J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2020-03-31 Corinne Bower; Rosalie Odean; Brian N. Verdine; Jelani R. Medford; Maya Marzouk; Roberta Michnick Golinkoff; Kathy Hirsh-Pasek
Block-building skills at age 3 are related to spatial skills at age 5 (citation removed) and spatial skills in grade school are linked to later success in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. Though studies have focused on block-building behaviors and design complexity, few have examined these variables in relation to future spatial and mathematical skills or have considered
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Assessing the Factor Structure and Measurement Invariance of the Test of Emotion Comprehension (TEC): A Large Cross-Sectional Study with Children Aged 3-10 Years J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2020-03-21 Valeria Cavioni; Ilaria Grazzani; Veronica Ornaghi; Alessandro Pepe; Francisco Pons
The Test of Emotion Comprehension (TEC) has been used extensively to investigate children’s understanding of emotion. The present study aimed at investigating the TEC’s factorial structure, its measurement invariance across age and gender, and defining age-referred TEC scores, in a large sample of 1,478 children (755 males, 723 females) aged between 3 and 10 years. Confirmatory factor analysis of the
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The Implied Shape of an Object in Adults’ and Children’s Visual Representations J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2020-03-21 Julie M. Hupp; Melissa K. Jungers; Brandon L. Porter; Brandy A. Plunkett
When hearing an object label, a specific object may come to mind. With the phrase, “There was a balloon in the pack/air” the representation of balloon varies based on the implied shape (deflated vs. inflated). The current study investigated whether the implied shape affects sentence-picture verification for adults and preschool children. Participants heard sentences and compared them to visual stimuli
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Deafness and Theory of Mind Performance: Associations among Filipino Children, Adolescents, and Young Adults J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2020-03-18 Ma. Regina Laya de Gracia; Marc de Rosnay; David Hawes; Maria Veronica Templo Perez
The acquisition of theory of mind (ToM) – the ability to attribute mental states to explain others’ behaviors – is a critical milestone in children’s cognitive development. Previous research has established that deaf children experience significant delays in ToM compared to hearing children within the same culture. However, prior studies were restricted due to the reliance on work in deaf samples from
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Individual Differences in Children’s Preferential Learning from Accurate Speakers: Stable but Fragile J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2020-02-27 Isabelle Cossette; Sophie F. Fobert; Michael Slinger; Patricia E. Brosseau-Liard
Children have repeatedly been shown to selectively prefer to learn from previously accurate informants rather than those who have been inaccurate in the past. However, the stability of individual differences in performance on such tasks has yet to be studied. We presented preschoolers with two identical selective learning tasks conducted one week apart (Study 1; N = 53) or two parallel selective learning
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Human Actions Support Infant Memory J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2019-10-17 Lauren H. Howard, Amanda L. Woodward
Agents are important for structuring memory in adulthood. However, it is unclear whether this “social memory bias” stems from a reliance on agents in verbal narratives, or whether it reflects more fundamental preverbal memory processes. By testing 9-month-old infants in a non-verbal eye-tracking paradigm, we were able to effectively compare infant memory for events construed as the goal-directed action
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Correction J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2019-09-19
(2019). Correction. Journal of Cognition and Development: Vol. 20, No. 5, pp. iii-v.
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Not Just IQ: Patterning Predicts Preschoolers’ Math Knowledge Beyond Fluid Reasoning J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2019-09-05 Erica L. Zippert, Kelsey Clayback, Bethany Rittle-Johnson
Preschoolers’ patterning skills are predictive of their concurrent and later math knowledge; however, it is unclear if patterning is only a proxy for general intelligence, or how it might support specific math skills. The current study examined the relation between 66 preschool children’s patterning skills and their general cognitive abilities, including fluid reasoning, working memory, and spatial
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Age Differences in Prospective Memory: A Further Evaluation of the Executive Framework J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2019-09-01 Xin Zhao, Junjun Fu, Xiaofeng Ma, Joseph H.R. Maes
According to the executive framework of prospective memory (PM), age-related differences in PM performance are mediated by age-related differences in executive functioning (EF). The present study further explored this framework by examining which specific components of EF are associated with PM differences between and within three age groups. A group of children (7–9 years; N = 108), adolescents (12–14
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Integrating Bilingualism, Verbal Fluency, and Executive Functioning across the Lifespan J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2019-08-29 Zhen Zeng, Marina Kalashnikova, Mark Antoniou
Bilingual experience has an impact on an individual’s linguistic processing and general cognitive abilities. The relation between these linguistic and non-linguistic domains, in turn, is mediated by individual linguistic proficiency and developmental changes that take place across the lifespan. This study evaluated this relationship by assessing inhibition skills, and verbal fluency in monolingual
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What Do Biased Estimates Tell Us about Cognitive Processing? Spatial Judgments as Proportion Estimation J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2019-08-20 Alexandra Zax, Katherine Williams, Andrea L. Patalano, Emily Slusser, Sara Cordes, Hilary Barth
Similar estimation biases appear in a wide range of quantitative judgments, across many tasks and domains. Often, these biases (those that occur, for example, when adults or children indicate remembered locations of objects in bounded spaces) are believed to provide evidence of Bayesian or rational cognitive processing, and are explained in terms of relatively complex Bayesian models (e.g., the Category
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The Influence of Spatial Visualization Training on Students’ Spatial Reasoning and Mathematics Performance J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2019-08-20 Tom Lowrie, Tracy Logan, Mary Hegarty
Over three decades of research has shown that spatial reasoning and mathematics performance are highly correlated. Spatial visualization, in particular, has been found to predict mathematics performance in primary and middle school children. This research sought to determine the effectiveness of a spatial visualization intervention program on increasing student spatial reasoning and mathematics performance
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Does intention matter? Relations between parent pointing, infant pointing, and developing language ability. J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2019-07-30 Virginia C Salo,Bethany Reeb-Sutherland,Tahl I Frenkel,Lindsay C Bowman,Meredith L Rowe
Infants’ pointing is associated with concurrent and later language development. The communicative intention behind the point – i.e., imperative versus declarative – can affect both the nature and strength of these associations, and is therefore a critical factor to consider. Parents’ pointing is associated with both infant pointing and infant language; however, less work has examined the intent behind
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Fostering Children’s Reasoning about Disagreements through an Inquiry-based Curriculum J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2019-07-24 Amanda S. Haber, David M. Sobel, Deena Skolnick Weisberg
We investigated how young children evaluate disagreements between two people and whether formal education affects this capacity. We compared 120 first graders tested during the 2014–2015 academic year, who received a direct instruction-based curriculum, with 112 first graders tested in the same school system during the 2016–2017 academic year, who received an inquiry-based curriculum. All children
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Negative Numbers are not yet Automatically Associated with Space in 6th Graders J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2019-07-11 Julia Mock, Stefan Huber, Ulrike Cress, Hans-Christoph Nuerk, Korbinian Moeller
The metaphor of the mental number line accounts for numerous empirical effects of spatial-numerical associations. In the present study, we aimed at investigating directional spatial-numerical associations reflected by SNARC-like digit-direction and sign-direction congruency effects as well as the sign-digit compatibility effect when 6th graders performed magnitude comparisons of multi-symbol numbers
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How Static and Animated Pictures Contribute to Multi-level Mental Representations of Auditory Text in Seven-, Nine-, and Eleven-Year-Old Children J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2019-07-07 Benedikt T. Seger, Wienke Wannagat, Gerhild Nieding
In our current culture, children are exposed to a huge amount of audiovisual media, of which many formats include animated pictures, such as in videos, for instance. The current study addresses the use of audiovisual media in order to increase the effectiveness of learning and teaching. We examined how auditory text, audiovisual text with static pictures, and audiovisual text with dynamic pictures
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Learning the Relevance of Relevance and the Trouble with Truth: Evaluating Explanatory Relevance across Childhood J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2019-06-28 Angie M. Johnston, Mark Sheskin, Frank C. Keil
In four experiments, we investigate how the ability to detect irrelevant explanations develops. In Experiments 1 and 2, 4- to 8-year-olds and adults rated different types of explanations about “what makes cars go” individually, in the absence of a direct contrast. Each explanation was true and relevant (e.g., “Cars have engines that turn gasoline into power”), true and irrelevant (e.g., “Cars have
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Attunement and Affordance Learning in Infants J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2019-06-27 Pieter F. De Bordes, Fred Hasselman, Ralf F. A. Cox
From a perceptual learning perspective, infants use social information (like gaze direction) in a similar way as other information in our physical environment (like object movements) to specify action possibilities. In the current study, we assumed that infants are able to learn an affordance upon observing an adult failing to act out that affordance, without appreciating object-directed intentions
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Individual Differences in Early Scientific Thinking: Assessment, Cognitive Influences, and Their Relevance for Science Learning J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2019-06-09 Susanne Koerber, Christopher Osterhaus
Early scientific thinking in kindergarten (6-year-olds) was investigated in a large study involving 227 participants. We investigated (1) whether individual differences across 3 scientific-thinking components (experimentation, data interpretation, and understanding the nature of science) are stable across children, (2) whether children’s increased information-processing skills (intelligence, language
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Foreword to the Special Issue: Found in Translation J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2019-06-07 Kelly S. Mix, Charles Kalish
(2019). Foreword to the Special Issue: Found in Translation. Journal of Cognition and Development: Vol. 20, Found in Translation: Cognitive Development Meets Education, pp. 107-109.
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Imitation as a Learning Strategy during Sibling Teaching J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2019-05-22 Nina Howe, Ryan J. Persram, Catherine Bergeron
The sibling relationship represents a unique bond characterized by a high degree of closeness and intimacy, which fosters teaching and learning. Two studies investigated associations between sibling-directed teaching, imitation as a learning strategy, and learner involvement during a semi-structured, video-taped construction task. Study 1 also examined associations with the teacher’s Theory of Mind
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Longitudinal Analysis of Associations between 3-D Mental Rotation and Mathematics Reasoning Skills during Middle School: Across and within Genders J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2019-05-19 Caitlin McPherran Lombardi, Beth M. Casey, Elizabeth Pezaris, Maryam Shadmehr, Margeau Jong
The development of math reasoning and 3-d mental rotation skills are intertwined. However, it is currently not understood how these cognitive processes develop and interact longitudinally at the within-person level – either within or across genders. In this study, 553 students (52% girls) were assessed from fifth to seventh grades on 3-d mental rotation spatial skills (assessed each fall) and numerical
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Relations between Preschool Children’s Fine Motor Skills and General Cognitive Abilities J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2019-05-14 Philipp Martzog, Heidrun Stoeger, Sebastian Suggate
An increasing number of findings suggest that cognition is grounded in sensorimotor experiences. Research suggests that fine motor skills (FMS) link to cognitive abilities. Existing studies, however, lack conceptual and methodological differentiation regarding FMS and little is known about the directional nature of links. In study 1, we measured three types of FMS, namely dexterity, grapho-motor skill
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Can Young Children Ignore Irrelevant Events, or Subevents, during Verb Learning? J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2019-05-13 Tyler J. Howard, Blaire M. Porter, Jane B. Childers
Children learning a verb may benefit from hearing it across situations . At the same time, in everyday contexts, situations in which a verb is heard will be interrupted by distracting events. Using Structural Alignment theory as a framework, Study 1 asks whether children can learn a verb when irrelevant, interleaved events are present. Two½- and 3½-year-old children saw dynamic events and were randomly
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The Influence of a Visually-Rich Surrounding Environment in Visuospatial Cognitive Performance: A Study with Adolescents J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2019-04-29 Pedro F. S. Rodrigues, Josefa N. S. Pandeirada
Adolescence is a developmental period characterized by a complex maturation process of various cognitive abilities. Cognitive control, which includes response inhibition and working memory, is one of them. A typical study on response inhibition to visual stimuli presents distractors and targets on the same display (e.g., the computer screen). However, in most daily activities, the potential for distraction
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Non-Linguistic Grammar Learning by 12-Month-Old Infants: Evidence for Constraints on Learning. J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2019-04-29 Chiara Santolin,Jenny R Saffran
Infants acquiring their native language are adept at discovering grammatical patterns. However, it remains unknown whether these learning abilities are limited to language, or available more generally for sequenced input. The current study is a conceptual replication of a prior language study, and was designed to ask whether infants can track phrase structure-like patterns from nonlinguistic auditory
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The “Sh-Ape Bias” in Non-Linguistic Categorization: Comparisons between Children and Other Apes J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2019-04-18 Jennifer Vonk, Geetanjali Rastogi
Children show a bias toward information about shape when labeling or determining category membership for novel objects. The body of work with human children suggests that the shape bias is not restricted to linguistic contexts but is highly contingent on task demands. Testing nonhumans could provide additional information about the salience of shape cues in the absence of linguistic relevance. In order
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Looking Back to Move Forward: A Retrospective Examination of Research at the Intersection of Cognitive Science and Education and What It Means for the Future J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2019-04-11 Erin J. Higgins, Amanda M. Dettmer, Elizabeth R. Albro
Research at the intersection of cognitive science and education has major benefits for both researchers and education practitioners. Yet, a number of logistical and communication challenges must be carefully negotiated to maximize the benefits of these collaborations. In this article, we trace the investments and major publications that have sought to bridge cognitive science and education over the
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Thinking Fast and Slow: Children’s Descriptive-To-Prescriptive Tendency Under Varying Time Constraints J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2019-04-08 Steven O. Roberts, Rina I. Horii
Children often infer that descriptive group norms (i.e., how a group is) are prescriptive (i.e., how group members should be), and this descriptive-to-prescriptive tendency, which biases children against non-conformity, declines with age. We tested whether this age-related decline diverged across different types of processing. Children (ages 4 to 13) were randomly assigned to one of two conditions
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Helen June Neville May 20, 1946 – October 12, 2018 J. Cognit. Dev. (IF 1.869) Pub Date : 2019-03-23 Lauren Vega O'Neil, Eric Pakulak, Courtney Stevens, Theodore A. Bell, Jessica L. Fanning, Marci Gaston, Melissa Gomsrud, Amanda Hampton Wray, Kerry B. Holmes, Scott Klein, Zayra Longoria, Mary Margaret Reynolds, Annie Soto
(2019). Helen June Neville May 20, 1946 – October 12, 2018. Journal of Cognition and Development: Vol. 20, Found in Translation: Cognitive Development Meets Education, pp. 134-135.
Contents have been reproduced by permission of the publishers.