When deciding whether to explore, agents must consider both their need for information and its cost. Do children recognize that exploration reflects a trade-off between action costs and expected information gain, inferring epistemic states accordingly? In two experiments, 4- and 5-year-olds (N = 144; of diverse race and ethnicity) judge that an…

The ability to make inferences about what one's peers know is critical for social interaction and communication. Three experiments (n = 309) examined the curse of knowledge, the tendency to be biased by one's knowledge when reasoning about others' knowledge, in children's estimates of their peers' knowledge. Four- to 7-year-olds were taught the…

Examined in 2 studies 3- to 7-year-olds and adults' connecting a person's current feelings to past experience. Found that even 3-year-olds demonstrated knowledge about connections between past events and present emotions. Children 5 years and younger revealed cogent understanding in explaining why someone who experienced a previous negative event…

Examined elementary students' evaluations of decision-making procedures in different social contexts. Found that consensus was preferred in peer and family contexts and authority-based procedures were preferred for school curricular decisions. Older children were more likely than younger to consider how children's limited knowledge and competence…

This study examined relations among cortisol reactivity and measures of cognitive function and social behavior in 4- to 5-year-old children (N=169) attending Head Start. Saliva samples for the assay of cortisol were collected at the beginning, middle, and end of an approximately 45-min testing session. Moderate increase in cortisol followed by…

Two studies investigated emotional-display-rule knowledge and its associations with family expressiveness and peer competence. Findings indicated that third graders combined expression regulation with prosocial reasoning, norm-maintenance, and self-protective motives more frequently than kindergartners. Negative expressiveness was related…

This study examined a model of emotional, cognitive, and behavior predictors of peer acceptance in 201 early elementary school students. Findings indicated that social skills mediated the effect of emotion knowledge on same- and opposite-sex social preference. However, social skills and verbal ability were more strongly related to opposite-sex…