Most language use is displaced, referring to past, future, or hypothetical events, posing the challenge of how children learn what words refer to when the referent is not physically available. One possibility is that iconic cues that imagistically evoke properties of absent referents support learning when referents are displaced. In an…

The COVID-19 context has created the most severe disruption to education systems in recent history. Its impact on child development was estimated comparing two cohorts of 4- to 6-year-old Uruguayan children: control (n = 34,355, 48.87% girls) and COVID cohort (n = 30,158, 48.95% girls) assessed between 2018 and 2020 in three waves, by a routinely…

The late positive potential (LPP), an event-related potential reflecting affective processing, may exhibit developmental shifts in magnitude and scalp location. In the present longitudinal study, 501 youth (47.3% female; 89.4% White; 12.0% Hispanic) completed the emotion interrupt task to elicit the LPP to neutral, positive, and negative images at…

Growing up with multiple siblings might negatively affect language development. This study examined the associations between birth order, sibling characteristics and parent-reported vocabulary size in 6163 Norwegian 8- to 36-month-old children (51.4% female). Results confirmed that birth order was negatively associated with vocabulary, yet…

Using latent profile analysis, the study examined distinct joint parenting styles among Chinese families with preschoolers (N = 300; 51.7% girls; M[subscript age] = 55.97 months). This study incorporated maternal and paternal reports on multiple parenting dimensions that covered both Western- and Chinese-emphasized practices. Using data collected…

Despite the ubiquity of variation in child development within individuals, across groups, and across tasks, timescales, and contexts, dominant methods in developmental science and education research still favor group averages, short snapshots of time, and single environments. The Learning Variability Network Exchange (LEVANTE) is a framework…

Preschool teachers' perceptions about relationships with students (teacher-child relationships [TCRs]) predict children's subsequent social competence (SC) and academic progress. Why this is so remains unclear. Do TCRs shape children's development, or do child attributes influence both TCRs and subsequent development? Relations between TCRs and…

When determining what others know, we intuitively consider not only whether they succeed but also their probability of success in the absence of knowledge (e.g., random guessing). Across three experiments (n = 240 North American 4-6-year-olds, data collected between 2020-2023) we find that 4-year-olds understand that tasks with a lower probability…

Across two studies, children ages 6-9 (N = 160, 82 boys, 78 girls; 75% White, 91% non-Hispanic) rated an inaccurate expert's knowledge and provided explanations for the expert's inaccurate statements. In Study 1, children's knowledge ratings decreased as he provided more inaccurate information. Ratings were predicted by age (i.e., older children…

Emotion understanding develops rapidly in early childhood. Firstborn children (N = 231, 55% girls/45% boys, 86% White, 5% Black, 3% Asian, 4% Latinx, Mage = 29.92 months) were recruited into a longitudinal study from 2004 to 2008 in the United States and administered a series of tasks assessing eight components of young children's emotion…

This study investigated age-dependent improvements of monitoring and control in 7/8- and 9/10-year-old children. We addressed prospective (judgments of learning and restudy selections) and retrospective metacognitive skills (confidence judgments and withdrawal of answers). Children (N = 305) completed a paired-associate learning task twice, with a…

This study examined the developmental profiles of children's social reasoning about individual agentive and deontic concerns. Tongan children (N = 140, 47.9% male), aged 4-8 years, were given a set of mentalistic (standard theory-of-mind) and deontic reasoning tasks. On average, children found diverse desires, knowledge access, hidden emotion, and…

Do children and adults recognize the value of disagreement for learning? Across two preregistered studies (data collected 2023), 4- to 8-year-old children (N = 200, 101 females, mixed ethnicities) and adults (N = 200, 99 females, mixed ethnicities) were asked whether a protagonist would learn more by talking to someone who agrees or disagrees with…

Retrieval practice is known to enhance long-term memory retention, a phenomenon termed as retrieval practice effect. Two experiments (NWhite = 202), showed that the effect was present in preschool age (5-6 years) and had a boundary condition, namely, amount of initial learning. Specifically, there was a considerable effect only when children…

Critical consciousness (CC) is associated with beneficial developmental outcomes among youth contending with oppression, yet we know little about how CC develops and how the three dimensions of CC (i.e., critical action, critical motivation, and critical reflection) interrelate over time. Therefore, this study employed second-order latent growth…