In a series of meta-analyses, paternal sensitivity was associated with children's (age range: 7 months-9 years) overall cognitive functioning (N = 3,193; k = 23; r = 0.19), including language skills (k = 9; r = 0.21), cognitive ability (k = 9; r = 0.18), and executive function (k = 8; r = 0.19). Paternal sensitivity was not associated with…

This study examined associations between caregiver talk and language skills in full term (FT) and preterm (PT) children (n = 97). All-day recordings of caregiver-child interactions revealed striking similarities in amount of caregiver talk heard by FT and PT children. Children who heard more caregiver talk at 16 months demonstrated better…

Nutrition plays an important role in the development of a child, particularly in low- and middle-income countries where malnutrition is often widespread. The relation between diet, hemoglobin, nutritional status, motor development, stimulation and mental development was examined in a cross-sectional sample of 1,079 children 12-18 months of age…

Publicly funded prekindergarten programs have achieved small-to-large impacts on children's cognitive outcomes. The current study examined the impact of a prekindergarten program that implemented a coaching system and consistent literacy, language, and mathematics curricula on these and other nontargeted, essential components of school readiness,…

This study describes the development of social reasoning in school-age children. An irony task is used to assess 5-, 7-, and 9-year-olds' (N = 72) and adults' (N = 24) recursive understanding of others' minds. Guttman scale analysis demonstrates that in order to understand a speaker's communicative intention, a child needs to recognize the…

Although "hindsight bias" (the "I knew it all along" phenomenon) has been documented in adults, its development has not been investigated. This is despite the fact that hindsight bias errors closely resemble the errors children make on theory of mind (ToM) tasks. Two main goals of the present work were to (a) create a battery of hindsight tasks…

Examined individual differences in social cognition among 128 urban preschoolers. Found that individual differences in understanding of false-belief and emotion were associated with differences in language ability, parental occupation, and mothers' education. Variance in family background only contributed uniquely to false-belief understanding.…

Sinclair-de Zwart's findings on relationships between cognitive and linguistic development were compared with data gathered in Australia from 162 first-, second-, and third-grade Greek-English bilinguals (tested in both languages) and 136 English monoglots in the same classroom. (Author/CS)

Two experiments examined the communicative bases of preschoolers' object appearance-reality (AR) errors. Found that AR performance correlated positively with performance on a control test with the same discourse structure but nondeceptive stimuli, and on a naming test. Overall findings indicated that the discourse structure of AR tests elicits a…

Examined the associations among speech perception, phonological awareness, naming speed, verbal memory, and word reading. Multiple measures were administered to 136 3rd- and 4th-grade children. Results indicated that naming speed was particularly highly associated with speech perception, whereas phonological awareness was substantially correlated…

Investigates the metalinguistic ability of monolingual or bilingual children between five and nine years of age on two language tasks (grammaticality judgment and correction). (HOD)

Examined the use by children of the Novel Name-Nameless Category principle, under the framework that lexical principles are acquired in a developmental sequence. Results indicated that the particular principle was not available at the start of lexical acquisition but that exhaustive categorization ability and a vocabulary spurt occur…

Examined the relationship of environmental input to cognitive growth in language, spatial operations, concepts, and associative memory in children tested four times six months apart and differing in the amount of school input received. Found that children made greater growth over periods with greater amounts of school input for language, spatial…

Examined how child care experiences related to cognitive and language development from birth through age 3. Found that care quality was modestly related to cognitive and language outcomes, after adjusting for several factors. Cumulative experience in center-based care related to better outcomes than did experience in other care. Children in…