The present study aimed to develop two visual tasks to assess the emotion understanding of institutionalized preschool children in India. To enhance the psychometric qualities of both tasks, content validity and inter-rater reliability assessments, translation-back translation and a rigorous peer review process were undertaken. In addition, the tool's components were mapped with institutionalized children's everyday experiences to help them better relate to the task. The tool development phase was followed by the assessment phase. Eighteen participants (nine males, nine females) aged 3-6 years were purposefully selected from three childcare institutions. The emotion identification task required children to identify the correct emotions from the cartoon characters' facial expressions and gestures, whereas, in the emotion situation task, children were asked to infer others' emotions from a vignette depicted by a picture card. Children's responses were videotaped, analysed and coded for both tasks. The study's key findings revealed that institutionalized children responded more accurately to emotion situation tasks yet struggled to identify sadness, anger and fear emotions compared to happiness. Furthermore, qualitative insights provided a comprehensive understanding and interpretation of the findings.

This study aimed to assess the relationship between menstruation-related attributes and mental distress in adolescent girls. A cross-sectional study was conducted in Rangeli Municipality, Nepal, among 270 adolescent girls. Data were collected using a self-administered questionnaire. Unadjusted and adjusted odds ratios (aOR) were calculated at a 5% level of significance to identify factors associated with depression, anxiety and stress. Of 270 adolescent girls, 28.9% (95% CI: 23.5%-35.2%) experienced anxiety, 14.4% (95% CI: 10.0%-18.5%) experienced stress and 32.2% (95% CI: 26.6%-37.4%) experienced depression. Low perceived family support during menstruation (aOR: 2.87, 95% CI: 1.03-7.97), low perceived support from friends during menstruation (aOR: 4.09, 95% CI: 1.66-10.07) and experiencing moderate/severe dysmenorrhea (aOR: 2.31, 95% CI: 1.105-5.08) were associated with anxiety. Those with moderate/severe dysmenorrhoea had higher odds (aOR: 5.60, 95% CI: 1.56-20.05) of experiencing stress. Low perceived family support (aOR: 3.07, 95% CI: 1.08-8.67), low perceived support from friends (aOR: 2.77, 95% CI: 1.11-6.89) and experiencing moderate to severe dysmenorrhoea (aOR: 3.56, 95% CI: 1.63-7.79) were associated with depression. The findings underscore the importance of proper management of dysmenorrhoea and need for social support from both family and friends during menstruation as these factors are associated with psychological distress among adolescent girls.

Gender nonconforming (GNC) boys often elicit negative reactions from peers and adults. However, it is unclear which aspects of nonconformity evoke negative social consequences. Are appearance characteristics, activity interests, or traits most impactful for peers' evaluations? Sixty-seven 6- to 11-year-old children and their parents interacted with a magnetic paper doll of a GNC boy who was displayed with feminine appearance characteristics, activity interests, and traits. Participants were allowed to physically remove feminine attributes and/or add masculine and neutral attributes to help the GNC boy make friends with boys. Participants were (1) more likely to change appearance and activities and less likely to change traits and (2) more likely to remove feminine attributes than add masculine and neutral attributes. Interactions between attribute type and gender differed across parents and children. Results suggest that interventions to reduce discrimination towards GNC boys should focus on reducing prejudice towards appearance- and activity-based nonconformity.

This study investigated whether cognitive function better predicted maths test performance than a clinical diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Forty-four drug naïve children (M = 101.34 months, SD = 19.39; 30% girls) were recruited from clinical ADHD referral waiting lists. Children underwent assessment of Executive Functions (EF), lower-level cognitive processes, and maths performance. Children were grouped using a categorical approach comprising (1) children with a clinical ADHD diagnosis and (2) children without a diagnosis (i.e., subthreshold ADHD). Secondly, hierarchical cluster analysis generated subgroups of children using EF scores. Children were compared on cognition, maths, and parent-rated symptoms of ADHD and co-occurring difficulties. Children's diagnostic outcomes did not differentiate maths performance. By contrast, EF subgroups generated meaningful cognitive clusters which differentiated maths test scores. This suggests that cognitive patterns of performance, rather than children's diagnostic outcomes, are more informative for identifying meaningful groups with variable maths performance which has implications for remedial support.

This pre-registered secondary analysis aimed to examine distinct longitudinal loneliness trajectories in youth and whether these trajectories were associated with psychological distress at final follow-up in the UK Household Longitudinal Study. Participants (N = 827, 55.1% female, Time 1: M ± SD = 16.50 ± 0.50 years) provided data during Waves 9, 10 and 11. K-means longitudinal clustering analysis was used to identify clusters of participants with distinct loneliness trajectories across measurement waves. We identified four clusters demonstrating distinct trajectories of loneliness: stable low (40.7%), stable high (20.6%), moderate decreasing (19.6%) and low increasing (19.1%). Compared to 'stable low loneliness', 'stable high' and 'low increasing' loneliness clusters were significantly associated with psychological distress at Wave 11 following adjustment for sex, ethnicity, parent's highest educational achievement and Wave 9 psychological distress. The current study offers an important contribution to the literature on patterns of youth loneliness and mental health consequences.

Family environment, emotion regulation and biological sensitivity have been shown to be associated with adolescents' externalizing problem behaviours. However, findings regarding respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) reactivity are mixed and sometimes contradictory. This study aims to clarify the roles of RSA reactivity and anger regulation in the relationship between negative family expressiveness (NFE) and adolescents' externalizing behaviour by measuring RSA reactivity during the Parent-Adolescent Interaction Task (PAIT), designed to simulate a naturalistic negative family environment. In this study, 125 Chinese adolescents (M = 13.95 years, SD = 0.95; 48% male) completed questionnaires assessing negative family expressiveness, anger regulation and externalizing problems. Additionally, we collected electrocardiogram and respiration data during both the resting period and a 10-min PAIT. Results showed that anger regulation mediated the relationship between NFE and externalizing problem behaviours. Moreover, adolescents' RSA reactivity moderated this mediation effect, even after controlling for baseline RSA. Greater RSA suppression potentially indicated greater susceptibility, with the relationship between NFE and anger regulation being more pronounced in adolescents with greater RSA suppression compared to those with lesser RSA suppression. These findings highlight the importance of considering physiological systems, especially within the context of adverse family environments, when studying the relationships with externalizing problems.

The information-seeking behaviour of adults focuses on optimizing the gathering and utilizing information to minimize search costs. In contrast, children tend to engage in information search during decision-making with less consideration for costs. This difference in behaviour is believed to be linked to the development of executive functions. Therefore, the present study aimed to investigate the relationship between executive function and cost-related information-gathering behaviour. We assessed 56 children aged 4-6 years, involving three tasks: an information-gathering task, an inhibitory control and a working memory task. In the information-gathering task, children participated in both non-cost and cost conditions, where they were given the opportunity to freely gather information or incur a cost to acquire information. The findings revealed that children with higher inhibitory control tended to gather less information when a cost was involved. This highlights the important role of inhibitory control in shaping information-seeking behaviour in early childhood.

To promote prosocial defending behaviours to social exclusion, it is important to understand the role of social-cognitive factors in bystanders' cognition, judgements and responses. The current research examined how social cognitive skills relate to different aspects of bystanders' cognition, judgements and responses in the five-step intervention model. Data were collected from 96 Turkish children and adolescents (M = 12.39 years, SD = 1.74, 59 girls, aged 10-17). Participants were presented with a hypothetical social exclusion scenario and their bystanders' cognition, judgements and responses were measured via five-step intervention model. Theory of mind (ToM), mind-reading motivation (MRM) and empathy were also measured as predictors. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that while ToM and MRM were more likely to predict bystanders' judgements and cognitions around social exclusion, empathy was also found to be correlated with behavioural aspects of bystanders' responses beside cognitions and judgements. Overall, our novel findings provide insight for intervention studies to promote prosocial bystanders' judgements, cognitions and responses by addressing different social-cognitive skills.

Help-seeking is a strategy by which children signal their need for social learning. In three experiments, we examined when and from whom 2-year-old (N = 146 children; mean age = 31.4 months) US children from diverse ethnoracial and economic backgrounds (62% White; 9% Latine; 24% low-income) seek help in problem-solving contexts. In Experiment 1, children sought more help when unfamiliar (and thus unable to solve) than when familiar with a problem. In Experiment 2, children selectively sought help from knowledgeable as opposed to ignorant helpers. Against our prediction, children in neither experiment preferred mature (adult) over immature (infant or peer) helpers. In Experiment 3, children again did not prefer mature over immature helpers when helpers were depicted with realistic photos instead of line drawings (as in Experiments 1 and 2). We discuss the findings in relation to children's knowledge of their status as social learners.

When learning new categories, do children benefit from the same types of training as adults? We compared the effects of feedback-based training with observational training in young adults (ages 18-25) and early school aged children (ages 6-7) across two different multimodal category learning tasks: conjunctive rule based and information integration. We used multimodal stimuli that varied across a visual feature (rotation speed of the "planet" stimulus) and an auditory feature (pitch frequency of a pure tone stimulus). We found an interaction between age and training type for the rule-based category task, such that adults performed better in feedback training than in observational training, whereas training type had no significant effect on children's category learning performance. Overall adults performed better than children in learning both the rule based and information integration category structures. In information integration category learning, feedback versus observational training did not have a significant effect on either adults' or children's category learning. Computational modelling revealed that children defaulted to univariate rules in both tasks. The finding that children do not benefit from feedback training and can learn successfully via observational learning has implications for the design of educational interventions appropriate for children.

This study explores the longitudinal association between Theory of Mind (ToM) and reading comprehension (RC) in middle childhood, focusing on three advanced ToM (AToM) components: social reasoning, reasoning about ambiguity and recognition of social norm transgressions. Over the course of a year, 112 nine-year-olds (61 girls, 51 boys; M = 9; 0 years, ±4 months at wave 1) were followed from Grade 3 to Grade 4 and assessed for AToM predictors of Grade-4 RC. Findings show that only social reasoning predicts RC, independent of general intelligence and prior RC performance. In turn, RC did not predict any AToM component. These findings contribute to understanding cognitive development in educational contexts, emphasizing the significance of AToM, particularly social reasoning, in RC.

Occupational gender stereotypes develop from early age and contribute to occupational gender imbalance. Previous research used questionnaires or interviews to investigate children's explicit stereotypes and where drawings have been used, mostly men-dominated occupations have been considered. This study used drawings and interviews to assess implicit stereotypes of both men and women-dominated occupations and whether children's sex, age and cultural background predicted these stereotypes. Two hundred and forty-three 6-to-7-year-olds and 10-to-11-year-olds in Britain and Argentina-encompassing both Global South and Global North perspectives- drew five human figures: (i) person of their choice, (ii) dancer, (iii) nanny (iv) firefighter and (v) pilot. In interviews, children confirmed and justified their gender choices for each drawing. Results indicate gender stereotypes in children from both countries, especially towards women-dominated occupations. Girls exhibited more rigid gender views than boys. These findings suggest widespread and culturally consistent occupational gender stereotypes, potentially limiting children's future job choices.

This study investigated whether feedback on their errors and speed improves kindergarten children's performance in an executive function (EF) task. Children from Switzerland (N = 213, 49% female, M = 6.4 years) were tested in the Hearts and Flowers task pre- and post-training and trained either on a variant of this task with (n = 71) or without feedback (n = 72), or on a control learning task (n = 70). The feedback group performed more efficiently than the no-feedback group during the intervention and partially also in the post-test. Both EF training groups performed more efficiently than the control group in the post-test. These results suggest that kindergarten children detect and monitor their errors and even get better at it given the opportunity to practice. Moreover, they benefit additionally from external feedback. Integrating feedback into computerized cognitive training (and learning apps) could be a potential avenue for interventions in school settings.

Although socioeconomic disadvantage is linked with academic underachievement, many children from low-income backgrounds perform well in school. Which modifiable factors predict this academic resilience? We examine between- and within-person predictors of one important academic metric - mathematics performance - across adolescence in 1715 (796 male, 919 female) youth living in poverty in Ireland, using data from three waves (9, 13, and 17/18 years) of the Growing Up in Ireland study. Using linear mixed models, math performance was worse when adolescents had more socioemotional and behavioural difficulties, more child-parent relationship conflict, parents had lower expectations of the adolescent's educational achievement, and when primary caregivers had less education. Adolescents who had better intellectual self-concept and attended a non-disadvantaged school had greater math performance. This research adds to the growing body of work suggesting academic resilience is dynamic and multisystemic; it provides potential targets at multiple levels to promote such resilience.

Previous studies have focused more on the facilitating effect of nature exposure on positive behavioural consequences. However, less attention has been paid to whether nature exposure can inhibit internalized problem behaviours, such as Internet addiction. Within the framework of the stimuli-organism-response theory, the present study examined the relationship between nature exposure and Internet addiction and investigated the mediating roles of anthropomorphism of nature and awe. In China, we recruited 1469 adolescents (mean age = 13.90 years old, SD = 0.59, 53.2% girls). Mediation analyses indicated that awe partially mediated the relationship between nature exposure and adolescents' Internet addiction. The anthropomorphism of nature and awe served as sequential mediating roles in the relationship between nature exposure and adolescents' Internet addiction. This study provides a nature-based perspective on the prevention and intervention of adolescents' Internet addiction.

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.

Understanding transgender youth coping mechanisms may help create strategies that reduce the influence of stress on quality of life. Our study aims to measure the quality of life of Brazilian transgender youth and analyse the association with their coping strategies used for dealing with general and gender-related stress. The sample consisted of 185 participants (μ = 18.49 years; SD 2.42); of which 95 (46.34%) transgender boys, 45 (21.95%) transgender girls, 65 (31.71%) non-binary. Better quality of life was related to social support, whereas lower quality of life was related to the use of avoidance coping style in the context of general stress. The study found no association between coping strategies for gender-related stress and quality of life. Thus, the increase in quality of life in the context of gender distress among transgender youth should involve other mechanisms than promoting coping skills.

An individual's social adaptation, which is influenced by both internalizing and externalizing factors, depends on social anxiety. We proposed that the connection between parental psychological control and social anxiety among middle school students was mediated by negative emotion response-focused strategies and moderated by socioeconomic status (SES). We collected data from 1343 Chinese students from 12 to 16 years old (M = 13.3, SD = 0.96) by applying the questionnaire of parental psychological control scale, social anxiety scale and negative emotion response-focused strategies scale. The findings demonstrated that parental psychological control, including father and mother psychological control, was positively associated with social anxiety and that the relationship between parental psychological control and children's social anxiety was mediated by negative emotion response-focused strategies. Meanwhile, SES played a moderating role in the relationship between children's negative emotion response-focused strategies and social anxiety. The findings also suggest that we should pay more attention to the psychological status and social interaction of children with lower SES.

The digital media landscape is rapidly shifting, and some children begin using digital media in infancy. As with book reading, young children need adult guidance to learn from digital media. Joint media engagement (JME) occurs when preschool children and their parents actively use digital media together. JME during early childhood is associated with increased learning from media. However, there are no validated scales of JME. In the present study, parents of 353 1-to-5-year olds answered a series of questions about their media use and behaviours. Exploratory factor analysis yielded two scales, one for viewing video content together and one for playing digital games together. Convergent validity was established by comparison to the widely used Television Mediation Scale. Together, these findings establish the JME instrument as a valid and reliable tool for measuring joint media engagement during early childhood.

Infant research often struggles with selective samples, especially when focusing on behavioural measures, such as those drawn from habituation tasks. However, selectivity may threaten the generalizability and interpretation of results, which is why the current study investigates attrition in a habituation task administered in a household setting in 7-month-old infants. We used a large-scale German dataset, focusing on the children's socioeconomic background, and investigated two aspects of attrition, namely, participation and task completion. The findings suggest significant effects of the children's socioeconomic background on attrition: Maternal education, parental occupation, household income and household language (German vs. other) were positively related to participation and task completion. The analyses indicate that multiple barriers may prevent parents from lower socioeconomic backgrounds from letting their children participate. The study concludes with a critical discussion of possible mechanisms of selectivity in behavioural measures as well as the household setting, in which the data were collected.

Source monitoring (SM) refers to attributing sources of information. There are various methods for measuring SM in children. We searched the PubMed, PsycINFO, Embase, Web of Science and Cochrane Library databases from their inception to February 24, 2023, to summarize the methods and measures of SM in children, identifying 141 studies. The procedure for the SM tasks encompassed encoding, interval and testing. The encoding tasks were classified into ground-based activities (n = 67), computer-based experiments (n = 42) and mixed methods (n = 34). The testing approaches were categorized into old/new recognition and source discrimination, n-alternative forced-choice, yes/no questions and recall/direct questions. Among 10 commonly used indicators, source-correct, source-incorrect, discrimination score and source accuracy were recommended to present the SM function. We also discussed the advantages and disadvantages of different SM methods in children, providing a reference for researchers to design and select SM measurements that meet their research objectives.

Do children consider temporal distance in their reasoning about the world? Using a novel method that relied minimally on verbal ability, we asked N = 106 3- to 6-year-olds to judge which of two characters felt more 'happy'/'sad' right now: one engaging in a pleasant/unpleasant activity tomorrow or another engaging in this same activity when they are a year older. That is, we examined whether children understood that the closer in time a future event, the more intense the currently felt emotion. Starting at age 4, children correctly judged which child was more 'happy'/'sad' right now. However, 4- to 6-year-olds tended not to explain their judgements by referring to temporal distance, per se. Results suggest that children are sensitive to temporal distance early in development, but do not yet verbally express this understanding. Implications for theories about children's future thinking and future areas of research are discussed.

This paper examined British children's (8- to 10-year-olds) and adolescents' (13- to 15-year-olds, N = 340; Female N = 171, 50.3%) expectations, evaluations and reasoning about a bystander peer who challenges the social exclusion of an immigrant or non-immigrant peer by a peer group of non-immigrant students. Participants read a hypothetical scenario in which a peer was excluded from an afterschool club by the peer group. The scenarios were either intergroup or intragroup contexts. Participants' expectations of a peer bystander challenging the social exclusion by the peer group, their perception of how the peer group would evaluate the challenger, and their reasoning around their expectations were measured. Adolescents were less likely to expect a peer bystander to challenge exclusion compared to children. Participants' perceptions of how the group would evaluate the challenger were significantly lower in intergroup compared to intragroup contexts. In intergroup contexts, adolescents with low expectations of challenging favoured group dynamics and group repercussions reasoning over moral reasoning, while children did not use group repercussions reasoning.

This study examines how listeners categorize second language (L2) accents and how their linguistic background affects this categorization. Ninety-eight adult bilingual and multilingual Greek listeners categorized accents in a familiar (British English)-unfamiliar (Australian English) L2 accent condition. Data were collected through an online survey and analysed using binomial mixed-effects models and signal detection analysis. The results demonstrated that both bilinguals and multilinguals exhibited low performance in the task, potentially due to their decreased familiarity with the Australian English accent and the fact that the two accents are phonetically similar. However, despite both groups' low performance, multilinguals outperformed bilinguals in accent categorization accuracy. This advantage could be attributed to a combination of cognitive and social dynamics. Results expand upon prior research, indicating that exposure to accent variation enhances listeners' abilities to categorize non-native accents. The study provides important theoretical implications for the perception of accents and practical insights into foreign language learning and multilingual communication.

The United Nations' Goals for Sustainable Development highlight gender inequality as a pervasive problem around the world. Developmental psychologists can help us understand the development and consequences of sexism in people's lives. I highlight ambivalent sexism theory as a promising framework for this work; and I offer recommendations for expanding the theory. Ambivalent sexism theory distinguishes between hostile sexism and benevolent sexism as complementary processes perpetuating and maintaining men's dominance and heteronormativity in society. I summarize how these two forms of sexism emerge during childhood and adolescence; and I review the negative manifestations of hostile and benevolent sexism during adolescence and adulthood. Next, I chart several directions for expanding the ambivalent sexism model. These include addressing sexism directed towards gender-nonconforming, sexual-minoritized, and gender-minoritized youth (in addition to sexism towards girls and women); taking into account the gender and sexual identities of both perpetrators and targets of sexism; considering a broader array of hostile and benevolent sexist practices than captured in existing measures; taking into account cultural variations and intersectionality in how ambivalent sexism is enacted; conducting more research on ambivalent sexism in childhood and adolescence and designing effective programs to reduce and to prevent ambivalent sexism beginning in childhood.

Examining mechanisms underlying sex differences in children's play styles, we studied girls with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) who provide a test of the relative effects of prenatal androgens versus rearing, and of behavioural similarity versus gender identity and cognitions. In this exploratory study, 40 focal children (girls and boys with and without CAH), aged 3-8 years, played for 14 min with a same-sex peer in a task designed to elicit rough-and-tumble play. Time-indexed ratings of positive affect and vigour of activity were evaluated via network mapping for sex-related differences in both levels and play dynamics (temporal relations among behaviours). Results suggest influences of both gender identity-aligned social cognitions and prenatal androgens: there was greater dyadic synchrony between positive affect for girls (regardless of CAH status) than boys, but girls with CAH displayed positive affect levels and directed vigorous peer play dynamics similar to boys.

This research examined how 3-6-year-olds judge appropriate levels of counting games based on a person's ability, desire for learning and degree of difficulty. Study 1 found that 3-year-olds did not consider a character's ability or desire, whereas older children gave high ability characters large number games and low ability characters small number games when the characters wanted to play a manageable game. However, older children gave large number games to characters who wanted to learn counting, regardless of their ability. In Study 2, in addition to a similar developmental change of jointly considering a character's ability and desire, it was found that 5-and 6-year-olds were more sensitive to the degree of difficulty. They were more careful than younger children to choose exceedingly large number games given the character's ability and desire. Implications for children's understanding of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) and goal orientation are discussed.

This research develops a brief, and preliminary, parent-report screener to assess gender identity alignment/distress in children. The increasing prevalence of children not identifying with their sex at birth, the length and outdated language of existing gender identity measures, and the need to assess gender identity among children (as opposed to adolescent/adult measures) motivate a screener. A survey containing 14 items from existing instruments was administered to a diverse set of 1110 parents of children ages 3-12. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, followed by multiple indicators and multiple causes (MIMIC) modelling, were used to develop a 5-item, unidimensional screener that may assess gender identity alignment/distress. The screener may be suitable to identify children who experience misalignment between their gender and sex assigned at birth and parents or children for whom this misalignment causes distress. These families may benefit from additional resources and conversations between paediatric staff and children about their gender identity, including education for parents, and/or referrals for specialty care. Future research should further streamline and validate this preliminary screener, examine its convergence with gender identity and distress measures and explore including children's perspectives.

Informal learning spaces present ripe opportunities to supplement formal learning experiences. In this paper, we offer a new approach to creating enriching learning activities for public spaces that reflects evidence-based practices rooted in developmental psychology and uses community-centring practices from participatory research approaches. We first argue that extant theory and research supports the use of guided play pedagogy to foster learning. Second, we argue that effective translation of research to practice should incorporate community voices at every stage of the design, implementation and evaluation process. We describe a new initiative called Playful Learning Landscapes that reflects tenets of core developmental theory including constructivism and social learning theories as well as guided play pedagogy. Playful Learning Landscapes also extends the scope and scale of these evidence-backed theories by collaborating with communities to design activities for local community spaces. Taken together, we offer a way of upholding core developmental theory with equitable, culturally inclusive research and intervention practices. Transforming community spaces into hubs for children's learning promises wide-reaching implications for equitable access, school readiness and early childhood education.

The current study explored whether positive contact through stories could influence how young children think about transgender identities and gender in general. A total of 174 children ages 5-6 and 9-10 were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: Jazz (participants watched a video regarding a transgender child named Jazz), Blue (participants watched a video regarding a marker that looked red on the outside but inside was really blue) and control (no video). Both videos described the main character as feeling different inside than outside, and their social transition to their preferred identity; researcher scaffolding supported the video messages. Children who viewed the Jazz video had: (a) greater understanding of transgender identities and (b) no overall differences in gender essentialism, but (c) lower gender essentialism on three specific measures (gender immutability, innate toy behaviours and innate preferences). Also, gender essentialism was lower in older versus younger children. In this study, a direct, realistic story was the only effective means of teaching children about transgender identities and reducing belief in gender immutability. Thus, stories can be a way to teach children about the social world and change essentialist beliefs, but the impact may be limited and greatly affected by features of the story.