In this study, we explored the cross-linguistic association of morphological awareness, vocabulary, word reading, and reading comprehension between Korean and English for Korean-speaking adolescents who learn English as a foreign language. One hundred twenty-one Korean Grade 7 students were assessed on morphological awareness, vocabulary, word reading, and reading comprehension in Korean and English. Confirmatory factor analysis showed that morphological awareness in Korean and English is best described by language-Korean and English, not a single factor across languages or factors by the type of morphology (inflection, derivation, or compound). Structural equation modeling showed that morphological awareness directly predicted reading comprehension both in Korean and English over and above vocabulary and word reading. There was also a cross-linguistic relation between Korean and English for morphological awareness, vocabulary, word reading, and reading comprehension. Furthermore, Korean morphological awareness predicted English reading comprehension via Korean reading comprehension and English morphological awareness. These findings shed light on the importance of L1 morphological awareness in L1 and L2 reading development.

Cheating is the behavioral realization of immoral decisions. It is a dynamic process that does not begin or end on the enactment of cheating. However, little research has closely looked at the behavioral dynamics of the cheating process. The current study analyzed smiling, face covering, and rhythmic body rocking among 4- to 7-year-old children (N = 120) who participated in a challenging math test. We compared these target expressive behaviors from baseline practice trials to the critical test trial. Compared with children who did not cheat, we found that those who cheated were more likely to display smiling during the critical test trial, and those who cheated were more likely to cover their faces throughout the experiment even before they had the opportunity to cheat. Rhythmic body rocking did not differ between cheating and non-cheating children. The study identified behavioral differences between children who cheated and those who did not cheat, laying the groundwork for understanding children's cheating behaviors from the lens of behavioral dynamics. It also suggests that with further research there might be some potential for distinguishing between these groups based on behavioral cues.

In adults, biological causes are commonly associated with immutability. However, it remains unclear when during their development children coherently connect these ideas in relation to reasoning about physical and mental traits and whether children reason differently by domain. Understanding this is relevant to illuminating children's conceptions about the body versus the mind. Prior work has suggested that a more sophisticated differentiated understanding of psychological traits may begin to emerge around 8 years of age. In Study 1a, therefore, we examined U.S. third graders' reasoning about the inheritance and malleability of physical and mental traits and whether their ideas coherently covary within each domain. In Study 1b, we further investigated the robustness of this differentiated understanding by exploring whether participating in a curriculum that presented simplified information about physical traits affected thinking about mental traits. Results reveal that third graders display robust coherence in their reasoning about trait inheritance and malleability. Children consistently judged physical traits as more inherited and less malleable than mental traits, with children's ideas about inheritability and malleability showing consistent connections within each domain. Moreover, exposure to science teaching about physical traits did not alter children's perception that mental traits are less inherited and more malleable. By 8 years of age, therefore, children clearly distinguish body from mind in theoretically coherent ways. Nevertheless, the covariance between beliefs about inheritability and immutability should provoke caution when talking to children about parent-child resemblances in capacities like intelligence lest some children infer that their abilities cannot be improved through effort.

Knowledge accumulates through direct instruction and as a consequence of productive memory processes. We report a longitudinal investigation of correlates of the specific productive process of self-derivation through memory integration, targeted because it is a compelling model of accumulation of semantic information. We sampled 148 children aged 8 to 12 years at enrollment. At each of two waves 1 year apart, children were tested on self-derivation through integration and on a battery of potential predictors thereof: cognitive abilities (recall of directly taught facts, verbal comprehension, visualization, visual-auditory learning, and working memory), educational experiences, and family socioeconomic status. Age-related variability was eclipsed by relatively stable individual variability. In both concurrent and longitudinal models, the only significant predictor of self-derivation was recall of directly taught facts. Together with prior research, the results suggest that self-derivation of new knowledge through integration is an individual trait not subsumed by general verbal and spatial skills.

There is substantial variability among parents in the amount of math input they provide at home, which is related to differences in children's early math knowledge. The current study examined whether parents' spontaneous focus on numerosity (SFON) predicts the math input they provide at home-in terms of both their math talk and frequency of math activities. Parents (N = 124) from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds in China were presented with a SFON picture task. Unique to the current investigation, two conditions were used to determine SFON. The conditions differed only in the hypothetical conversational partner: an adult-oriented condition and a child-oriented condition. No effect of SFON was found for math activities, but there was an effect on math talk; child-oriented SFON, but not adult-oriented SFON, predicted the amount and diversity of math talk parents produced during play interactions. Furthermore, parents' education was associated with their SFON and its relation to math talk. Parents with more advanced education had greater SFON scores than those with lower education. Importantly, the positive relation between parents' SFON and their math talk was moderated by socioeconomic status (SES), such that the effect was primarily driven by low-SES parents. Together, the findings suggest that SFON may be a promising construct in the study of parent math input, but parents' SES and the nature of the SFON task must be taken into consideration.

Low socioeconomic status (SES) and high household chaos are adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) that increase the risk of worse executive functioning (EF) and socioemotional (SE) development. EF and SE skills are foundational for lifelong success, but less is known about how positive childhood experiences (PCEs) such as parenting relationships may buffer the impact of ACEs on these important skills. This study examined how SES and household chaos related to EF and SE skills within the context of varying parenting relationships among a sample of 83 socioeconomically and racially/ethnically diverse 4- to 7-year-old children in the urban United States. SES was associated with children's lab-based EF, but not survey-based EF or SE skills. Household chaos was related to children's SE skills, with evidence of full mediation through parenting relationships, but was not related to children's EF. Although we found evidence of moderation, none of the interactions was in the expected direction. Thus, this study failed to find evidence of parenting relationships as a PCE protective against risk from SES and household chaos for children's EF and SE skills. However, parenting relationships were more strongly related to children's survey EF and SE skills than either ACE, indicating the importance of fostering parenting relationships for children's SE development across risk levels. Results increase our understanding of how positive and adverse childhood experiences relate to child development in a diverse sample and have implications for measurement approaches and family policy.

The current study investigated how children's experiences with advantaged or disadvantaged status within one inequality influence their responses to other inequalities that they are neither advantaged nor disadvantaged by. Children (N = 161; 3-8 years of age; 80 girls and 81 boys; sampling population: 70% White, 16% African American, 10% Latine, and 4% Asian American; middle-income families) were first randomly assigned to an advantaged or disadvantaged status within a first-person, gender-based inequality and were then assessed on their allocations of new resources and judgments of rectifying, equal, and perpetuating allocations in response to a separate third-person, economic-based inequality between two other recipients. We found that children who were advantaged by the first-person inequality were less likely to rectify the third-person inequality, especially if they focused on the advantaged recipient's perspective when reasoning about their allocation. Younger advantaged children were also less likely to judge rectifying the third-party inequality as fair. Taken together, these results demonstrate how children's experiences with inequalities inform their responses to other third-person inequalities and conceptions of fairness more broadly.

Children's literature is rife with anthropomorphic or non-human characters that may be used as a scaffold to teach children about theory of mind (ToM) or the ways in which people think or feel about the social world. In this study, 107 typically developing U.K. school children in Years 1, 3, and 5 (5-10 years of age) completed a human and anthropomorphic ToM test that tested their understanding of faux pas. Specifically, children from these three age groups were given a human version of 20 faux pas stories and an identical animal version of the same stories 1 week apart (with counterbalancing between classes). Pairwise comparison showed that participants in Year 1 did significantly better on the animal ToM test compared with the human ToM test, matching ToM scores of children in Year 3. On the human version of the task, there was a clear progression in age-related ToM abilities, with older children outperforming younger children and improving when the stories were human rather than anthropomorphic. Implications and future directions are discussed, in line with theories of species specialization and the importance of anthropomorphism for children.

The importance of early numerical and executive function (EF) skills is well-established, with each skill set positively and specifically predicting later mathematics achievement, income, postsecondary education, and more. Less is known, however, about the relations between EF and numerical skills. Therefore, we examined the concurrent and predictive relations between EF and numerical skills in preschoolers to third graders (N = 205; 4.67-8.75 years of age; 43.9% female; 51.2% White non-Hispanic, 18% multiracial, 6.3% Hispanic, 12.2% Black, 2% American Indian/Alaska Native, 4.9% Asian, 1% not otherwise listed). We found positive concurrent relations between EF and all six numerical skills examined: nonsymbolic magnitude comparison, verbal counting, numerical literacy, count on, non-rote counting, and numerical problem solving. There were unidirectional predictive relations between EF and four of the six numerical skills after controlling for covariates and prior performance on the skill of interest. Bidirectional relations were found only for EF and nonsymbolic magnitude comparison. We also found that the concurrent relation between EF and count on was higher for children with typical versus persistently low mathematics achievement. All other concurrent and predictive relations were similar for children with typical and persistently low mathematics achievement. Overall, these findings show that the relations between EF and numerical skills are both pervasive and nuanced, such that they vary by timing of assessments (i.e., concurrent or predictive) and numerical skill. These results can inform future theoretical models on the role of EF in numerical development and have practical implications for designing interventions targeting these skill sets in early childhood.

The rhythmic priming effect (RPE) refers to improved language performance (typically grammaticality judgements) following regular rhythmic primes compared to various control conditions. This effect has been observed primarily in French, but also in English and Hungarian. However, a recent implementation by Kim, McLaren & Lee (2024), aiming to replicate the RPE in English (Chern, Tillmann, Vaughan & Gordon, 2018), was not successful, inviting a discussion about the conditions under which the RPE could be observed. We here discuss features of Kim et al.'s (2024) implementation that might have reduced the probability of observing the RPE. Compared to Chern et al. (2018), and numerous other studies reporting the RPE, additional delays after the primes and before each sentence were introduced by Kim et al. (2024). This change might have limited beneficial prime effects, which persist, but decay over time. Further, their instruction to "relax and have some rest" might have reduced attentive processing of the primes and related entrainment. Finally, their sample was small (n =16 per experiment) and with a large age range for investigating typically developing children (7-12y), potentially reducing experimental effects due to development-related individual variations. These methodological changes and sample characteristics are discussed in relation to previous research on the RPE, and entrainment in general. This discussion prompts the need for future research to investigate conditions leading to the RPE, with the aim to shed light on underlying mechanisms. Better understanding the RPE will be critical for the use of rhythmic priming within clinical and educational settings.

Prosody is how words are spoken, often affecting the messages we convey. When prosody is relevant to the meaning, word learning is enhanced; however, it is unknown whether children attend to prosody that is not relevant to a word learning task (e.g., fearful for no reason). Previous research with adult noun learning showed that some emotional prosodies (e.g., warning) decreased word learning in comparison with a neutral Name prosody, demonstrating adults' inability to ignore this irrelevant information. Given preschool children's developing abilities to use prosody, the current research examined the effect of emotional prosody on children's novel noun learning. In this study, preschool children (N = 67) were trained on novel labels paired to novel referents across five prosodic categories. Results suggest that referent complexity, animacy status, and prosody affect children's noun learning, but in a different way than they affect adults. Prosody affected learning labels only for simple inanimate referents, with Happy and Fear prosodies being more accurate than the neutral Name. Whereas adults in previous research have been seemingly distracted by emotional prosody in learning nouns, children's novel noun learning for simple objects was enhanced by Happy and Fear prosodies. This demonstrates the potential benefits that emotional prosody may have on children's word learning.

This study examined whether an internet source's history of inaccuracy influences children's epistemic trust in online information. Chinese children aged 4 to 8 years (N = 84; 41 girls and 43 boys) accessed information on their own from an image-based website, heard information from the internet that was relayed by an adult, or viewed a person in a video providing information without referring to the internet (in a baseline condition). After the internet source provided three obviously inaccurate statements, children significantly reduced their epistemic trust in the internet source regardless of whether they obtained the information through a direct interaction with the internet or it was relayed by an adult. Moreover, the extent of the reduction in trust was comparable to the baseline video condition. Taken together, these findings demonstrate that 4- to 8-year-old children take into account a history of inaccuracy and revise their beliefs in statements from the internet, just as they do when evaluating human informants.

This longitudinal study tracked the developmental relations linking metacognition, theory of mind, and inhibitory control in 52 children across a 1.5-year interval, beginning at 3 or 4 years of age. Metacognition and inhibitory control emerged before theory of mind and predicted subsequent theory of mind competence. Moreover, there was evidence of developmental mediation, whereby metacognition predicted inhibitory control, which predicted theory of mind. We suggest that metacognitive self-reflection may provide the "developmental enrichment" necessary to think about thinking, and when inhibitory control is sufficiently developed this thinking can be extended to complex reasoning about own and other minds.

Infant sleep plays a crucial role in various aspects of language development, including the generalization of visual and auditory stimuli. The relative role of daytime naps and nocturnal sleep in these memory generalization processes is debated, with some studies observing significant generalization following a post-encoding nap and others observing it following nocturnal sleep, but only in cases where a post-encoding nap had occurred on the previous day. We conducted an online experiment with 8-month-old infants to determine whether a nap immediately following auditory exposure to words spoken by one talker enhances infants' recognition of the same word forms produced by a different talker (i.e., word form generalization). This ability involves the extraction of constant auditory features from a pool of variable auditory instances and thus is an example of memory generalization. Results revealed a significant increase in word form generalization after a night's sleep, specifically in infants who napped shortly after initial exposure to the words. This study provides the first evidence for the combined role of post-encoding naps and nocturnal sleep in phonological learning across different acoustic contexts. Phonological learning is frequently overlooked in research about word learning; however, prior to a child's ability to associate words and their meanings and to use language referentially they must first encode and access the phonological forms of words and recognize them in running speech. Therefore, the findings from this study contribute significantly to our understanding of vocabulary acquisition by highlighting the importance of daytime naps in phonological learning.

Previous studies document associations between parents' use of guided-play strategies and children's STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) skills. We extend existing research by exploring mediating mechanisms that may account for these links. Parents played with their preschool children (N = 75; 49% girls and 51% boys; 94% White, 3% Black, 1% biracial, 1% Asian, and 1% Native American; M = 4.82 years) in undertaking a building challenge. Videotaped play was coded for parents' guiding STEM talk (density of math, spatial, and scientific inquiry language) and management strategy (high vs. low directiveness). Mediators included children's STEM talk during play and self-regulated learning (assessed by executive function tests and examiner's ratings of children's task orientation). Structural equation models confirmed hypothesized mediated paths from parent STEM talk to child math (but not spatial) skills via child STEM talk and from parent STEM talk and directiveness to child math and spatial skills via child self-regulated learning. We discuss implications for future research and intervention design.

In monocular gap stereopsis, one eye perceives a complete rectangular surface while the other eye perceives two small adjacent rectangular surfaces separated by a narrow vertical gap. Our visual system interprets the difference caused by the unmatched monocular images as a depth difference between two small rectangles. In a spontaneous visual preference study, it was asked whether participants aged 4 months responded to the depth effect generated by a monocular gap. Two experimental conditions were conducted. In one (large outer edge disparity condition), the monocular depth effect was twice as strong as in the other one (small outer edge disparity condition), according to the experimental research with adult participants conducted by Pianta and Gillam (2003, Vision Research, Vol. 43, pp. 1937-1950). In both conditions, it was tested whether the stimulus bearing monocular gap stereopsis was preferred over a comparison stimulus without depth. According to the results, the participants preferred looking at the stimulus with monocular stereopsis in the large outer edge disparity condition over doing so in the small outer edge disparity condition. Moreover, the difference between experimental conditions was significant; that is, the infants displayed a stronger spontaneous preference in the condition with the large outer edge disparity than in the condition with the small outer edge disparity. These findings provide evidence to suggest that infants aged 4 months are able to respond to monocular vertical gap information.

Motor imagery (MI) is fundamentally linked to the motor system. It improves motor learning and optimizes motor actions without physical execution, highlighting its unique role in rehabilitation programs and motor performance. Understanding the developmental trajectories of MI and the factors influencing its variability across ages could enable more effective, age-specific strategies for pediatric rehabilitation. This study assessed 65 children aged 7 to 14 years at two time points 1 year apart. MI ability was assessed using the Movement Imagery Questionnaire for Children, and physical fitness was evaluated using the SLOfit testing battery. Among the three perspectives assessed; internal visual imagery (IVI), external visual imagery (EVI), and kinesthetic imagery (KI), KI was unique in not correlating with age at both time points. The development of MI perspectives varied between athletes and non-athletes, with non-athletes showing a decline in IVI compared with athletes. This differential was further evidenced by significant differences in KI between the groups at the second assessment, with a similar trend observed at the first assessment. Of the physical fitness tests, only the 600-m run correlated consistently with KI at both assessments. Our findings suggest that regular participation in sports significantly affects KI performance, highlighting the importance of sports participation for the development of MI abilities in children. Future research should examine additional assessment points in different age groups and sport experience to better understand the development of MI and its potential implications for pediatric rehabilitation.

Overimitation represents an early developing behavior implicated in the emergence of learning, affective, and social competences. Adult overimitation is heavily affected by contextual variables such as social ostracism, the experience of being ignored by others in a social context, an experience that threatens several psychological needs, inducing the urge to reaffiliate with a social group to restore the original state of well-being. Yet, the impact of social ostracism on overimitation in children remains unclear. This study explored how a face-to-face triadic inclusive/ostracizing ball-tossing game affects overimitation in predominantly White 3-year-old children (n = 43, 53.4% boys) and 5-year-old children (n = 43, 41.8% boys). Results showed that preschoolers are highly affected by social ostracism experiences, with both age groups displaying decreased positive emotionality and heightened negative emotionality when ostracized. Despite this continuity in the affective and behavioral reactions toward social exclusion, imitation fidelity is differently affected by first-person ostracism; the 3-year-olds imitated more when ostracized, whereas the 5-year-olds did so when included, signaling a developmental difference between the strategy repertoire at different ages. Overall, the current findings shed light on the social influences driving preschoolers' overimitation behaviors, emphasizing the importance of investigating social mechanisms underlying imitation and young children's social cognition development.

Although young children often use counting to solve arithmetic problems, over time they move toward more efficient strategies such as direct retrieval and decomposition. Strategy selection has longitudinal associations with children's math achievement. Existing research indicates that children's executive functions (EFs) support inhibiting unnecessary strategies and adaptively switching between strategies. Moreover, research has documented gender differences in strategy use, but prior literature does not account for the contributions of socioeconomic factors in children's strategy trajectories. The current study examined the unique roles of preschoolers' EFs, gender, household income, and maternal education for the trajectories of strategy use on arithmetic problems across early elementary school. Preschoolers' EFs were assessed at 5 years 3 months of age, and children completed addition and subtraction problems in first, second, and third grades. Children's strategies were categorized as retrieval, counting, decomposition, and sign flipping. Results indicated that children with higher EFs were more likely to use retrieval and sign flipping in first grade compared with children with lower EFs, and this advantage was maintained into third grade. Boys used more retrieval and decomposition, whereas girls used more counting strategies, in first grade, and this pattern held longitudinally. Finally, children whose mothers had more years of education were likely to use decomposition and sign flipping in first grade, with an advantage through third grade. Overall, the current study sheds light on how cognitive and sociodemographic factors differentially contribute to children's accurate strategy use, with implications for how to best target early interventions to support children's math achievement.

Language processing encompasses a sophisticated interplay of phonological (sound-based) and semantic (meaning-based) processes. This intricate interaction develops progressively during early language acquisition. It involves not only the addition of new words to the child's vocabulary but also the evolving organization of lexico-semantic networks. The aim of the current research was to investigate how young children navigate the complexities of word relationships, with a focus on the interplay between phonological similarity and semantic relatedness. A preferential looking experiment was conducted involving 73 participants divided into two age groups, with 39 aged 18 months and 34 aged 24 months. The experimental design involved auditory presentation of target words together with pairs of target and distractor images that systematically varied the phonological and semantic similarity between the pairs. The results showed a significant developmental progression in young children's phonological and semantic processing abilities. At 18 months, children predominantly responded to phonological cues, displaying challenges in distinguishing between phonologically similar words regardless of semantic context. By 24 months, there was an evident sensitivity to both phonological and semantic cues. This age group especially showed processing difficulties with words that were both phonologically similar and semantically related, suggesting a more complex integration of lexico-semantic networks. These findings underscore the pivotal role of phonological processing in early language acquisition and point to the gradual integration of semantic relationships into children's lexicons.

This research examined how children evaluate the legitimacy of various sorts of rules as well as children's reasoning about the legitimacy of covertly defying and lying to parents to resist those rules. We asked U.S. 6-, 8-, and 11-year-olds (N = 118) to assess seven hypothetical situations depicting comparably aged children engaged in defiance and deception to circumvent parents' prohibitions. The nature of parents' justifications for the prohibitions varied in terms of social-cognitive domain (moral, personal, prudential, pragmatic, or conventional). Evaluations and justifications for the legitimacy of parents' prohibitions and children's defiance and deception were examined, as were general evaluations of deception and parental authority. Across situations, increased age was associated with decreased acceptance of proscriptions and, in several situations, increased acceptance of defiance and deception. Children responded significantly differently to prohibitions by domain of norm. With age, children increasingly justified defiance and deception for reasons of personal autonomy. They also increasingly endorsed defiance and deception as moral obligations required to resist immoral norms. This research shows that children value parental authority, but not at the expense of their personal autonomy, and they value honesty but sometimes subordinate it to competing moral concerns.