To learn a verb, children must attend to objects and relations, often within a dynamic scene. Several studies show that comparing varied events linked to a verb helps children learn verbs, but there is also controversy in this area. This study asks whether children benefit from seeing variation across events as they learn a new verb, and uses an…

The research focuses on the diagnostics and stimulation of socially disadvantaged children of a preschool age, which is a crucial component of inclusive education. The aim of the research was to experimentally verify through input and output orientation diagnostics the effectiveness of the stimulation program for 5 to 6 year old socially…

The authors developed a digital spelling game to promote children's early literacy skills. Based on the dual-coding theory, the authors studied the benefits of auditory support alone versus auditory+visual support. Children played the game in three conditions: no support, hearing the whole word; auditory-only support, hearing a word segmented; and…

Previous research has illustrated the unique benefits of three-dimensional (3-D) Virtual Reality (VR) technology in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) children. This study examined the use of 3-D VR technology as an assessment tool in ASD children, and further compared its use to two-dimensional (2-D) tasks. Additionally, we aimed to examine…

Forty-four preschoolers completed 2 conditions of a Stroop-like procedure (e.g., saying "boat" for car and "car" for boat) that differed in whether a 3-s delay was imposed before responding. The test card was visible during the delay period for half of the children and occluded for the other children. Preschoolers' interference control was…

Variability in attention towards direct gaze and child-directed speech may contribute to heterogeneity of clinical presentation in toddlers with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). To evaluate this hypothesis, we clustered sixty-five 20-month-old toddlers with ASD based on their visual responses to dyadic cues for engagement, identifying three…

Dynamic relations during the preschool years across processes of control and understanding in the domains of emotion and cognition were examined. Participants were 263 children (42% non-White) and their mothers who were seen first when the children were 3 years old and again when they were 4. Results indicated dynamic dependence among the…

Research Findings: The present study evaluated the impact of a working memory (WM) stimulation program on the development of WM and early literacy skills (ELS) in preschoolers from socioeconomically deprived rural and urban schools in Chile. The sample consisted of 268 children, 144 in the intervention group and 124 in the comparison group. The…

Background: Previous research highlights the significance of a functional polymorphism located in the promoter region (5-HTTLPR) of the serotonin transporter gene in emotional behaviour. This study examined the effect of the 5-HTTLPR polymorphism on emotion processing in a large number of healthy preschoolers. Methods: The 5-HTTLPR genotype was…

This study focuses on the development of face recognition in typically developing preschool- and school-aged children (aged 5 to 15 years old, "n" = 611, 336 girls). Social predictors include sex differences and own-sex bias. At younger ages, the development of face recognition was rapid and became more gradual as the age increased up…

Since Broca's studies on language processing, cortical functional specialization has been considered to be integral to efficient neural processing. A fundamental question in cognitive neuroscience concerns the type of learning that is required for functional specialization to develop. To address this issue with respect to the development of neural…

This study is an initial investigation of the effects of a fading procedure upon acquisition and transfer of discrimination learning with children younger than 36 months of age. (CS)

Learning names for parts of objects can be challenging for children, as it requires overcoming their tendency to name whole objects. We test whether comparing items can facilitate learning names for their parts. Applying the structure-mapping theory of comparison leads to two predictions: (a) young children will find it easier to identify a common…

Young preschool children aged 2 and 3 years were exposed to a novel paradigm designed to train visual perception skills. The results indicate that children of this age can be trained to perform a percept deprivation task that requires a sophisticated understanding of attention not normally mastered until 3.5-4 years. Results are discussed with…

Researchers know little about whether very young children can recognize objects originally introduced to them in a picture book when they encounter similar looking objects in various real-world contexts. The present studies used an imitation procedure to explore young children's ability to generalize a novel action sequence from a picture book to…