Humans can attribute beliefs to others. However, it is unknown to what extent this ability results from an innate biological endowment or from experience accrued through child development, particularly exposure to language describing others' mental states. We test the viability of the language exposure hypothesis by assessing whether models…

Early interaction is a dynamic, emotional process in which infants influence and are influ­enced by caregivers and peers. This chapter reviews new developments in behavior imag­ing--objective quantification of human action--and computational approaches to the study of early emotional interaction and development. Advances in the automated…

Guided by evolutionary-developmental models, this study tested the hypothesis that children's exposure to parental relationship instability, defined by initiation and dissolution of caregiver intimate relationships, has both costs in cognitive impairments and benefits in enhanced learning skills. Participants included 243 mothers and their…

The Fullerton Longitudinal Study offers a unique opportunity to model the stability of intelligence and achievement and their relations from elementary through secondary school. Using latent variable modeling, we fit a cross-lagged panel model to examine the relations between intelligence and achievement in two academic domains: mathematics and…

Linguistic alignment--the contingent reuse of our interlocutors' language at all levels of linguistic structure--pervades human dialogue. Here, we design unique measures to capture the degree of linguistic alignment between interlocutors' linguistic representations at three levels of structure: lexical, syntactic, and semantic. We track these…

The role of working memory (WM) in language acquisition has been widely reported in the developmental literature, but few studies have explored the role of sentence recall in the way WM and related linguistic abilities evolve. This study seeks to explore the organization and development of the memory architecture underlying language using a…

This study reanalyzes data presented by Ritchie, Bates, and Plomin (2015) who used a cross-lagged monozygotic twin differences design to test whether reading ability caused changes in intelligence. The authors used data from a sample of 1,890 monozygotic twin pairs tested on reading ability and intelligence at five occasions between the ages of 7…

The Early Start Denver Model (ESDM) is an intervention program recommended for pre-schoolers with autism ages 12-48 months. The rationale for this recommendation is the potential for intervention to affect developmental trajectories during early sensitive periods. We investigated outcomes of 32 children aged 18-48 months and 28 children aged…

Contemporary thinking challenges the view that giftedness and high IQ are synonymous. Contemporary thinking also challenges the view that being gifted is something real. A number of authorities in the gifted field advocate a paradigm shift; moving away from emphasizing categorical definitions of giftedness and adopting a talent development…

Aim: This study investigated prediction of separate cognitive abilities at the age of 5 years by cognitive development at the ages of both 2 and 3 years, and the agreement between these measurements, in very preterm children. Methods: Preterm children (n=102; 44 males; 58 females) with a gestational age less than 30 weeks and/or birthweight less…

Case studies of extremely gifted individuals often reveal unique patterns of intellectual precocity and associated abnormalities in development and behavior. This article begins with a review of current neurophysiological and neuroanatomical findings related to the gifted population. The bulk of scientific inquiries provide evidence of unique…

To explore whether punitive parenting styles contribute to early-acquired emotion knowledge deficits observable in neglected children, we observed 42 preschool children's emotion knowledge, expression recognition time, and IQ. The children's mothers completed the Parent-Child Conflict Tactics Scales to assess the recent use of three types of…

Whether results previously found in adults, demonstrating a relationship between intellectual ability, speed of information processing, and memory capacity could be found in young children was studied with 109 children. Findings suggest that children's intelligence cannot be explained using a model of adult intelligence. (SLD)

Data from a variety of infant intelligence scores make clear that it is not possible to consider (1) that infant intelligence is a measurable, stable and unitary construct, (2) that there is a general g factor easily discernible in infancy, (3) that there is stability of scores both within and across scales, or (4) that there is predictability…

The growth model of intelligence; i.e. intelligence is the product of genetics plus environment (I.Q.=G+E), is discussed and questioned. If the growth model is discarded, formulating the problem of the development of intelligence in different ways and thinking of different possible technologies for changing intelligence can begin. The child…