Theorists have speculated about the symbolic underpinnings of theory of mind (ToM), but no study has examined them across the main developmental span of ToM. Here, the onset of symbolic understandings in three domains (pretend play, language, and understanding representations) and ToM was examined. Fifty-eight children were tested on batteries of…

This special section on the development of emotion regulation highlights several important new directions for research. Specifically, the findings of these studies indicate that: (1) emotion regulation develops across the lifespan and not just in early childhood and does so in complex ways, (2) it is necessary to distinguish among emotions to…

Binding is key in multisensory perception. This study investigated the audio-visual (A-V) temporal binding window in 4-, 5-, and 6-year-old children (total N = 120). Children watched a person uttering a syllable whose auditory and visual components were either temporally synchronized or desynchronized by 366, 500, or 666 ms. They were asked…

The self-reference effect in memory is the advantage for information encoded about self, relative to other people. The early development of this effect was explored here using a concrete encoding paradigm. Trials comprised presentation of a self- or other-image paired with a concrete object. In Study 1, 4- to 6-year-old children (N = 53) were…

Two experiments provide evidence that preschoolers selectively infer history when explaining outcomes and infer past events that could have plausibly happened. In Experiment 1, thirty-three 3-year-olds and thirty-six 4-year-olds explained why a character owns or likes certain objects. In Experiment 2, thirty-four 4-year-olds and thirty-six…

In this commentary, Buchheim states that she recognizes that infant-parent relationship has been shown to be of particular significance to preterm infants' socioemotional development, and that preterm children have been reported to be at higher risk of developing attachment insecurity and disorganized attachment. In the feature paper on attachment…

The authors share how to develop active, stimulating learning environments with a focus on culturally relevant music for young Latin@ children. They provide a backdrop for this article by sharing the role of música (music) in their own lives as children, educators, and for one of them as an artist and the other as a parent of a now five-year-old.…

Art is a unique feature of human experience. It involves the complex interplay among stimuli, persons and contexts. Little is known of how the various features deemed important in art appreciation depend on development, thus are already present at a young age. Similarly to our previous approach with adults of differing levels of expertise, the…

Few systematic studies of play in foragers exist despite their significance for understanding the breadth of contexts for human development and the ontogeny of cultural learning. Forager societies lack complex social hierarchies, avenues for prestige or wealth accumulation, and formal educational institutions, and thereby represent a contrast to…

This article considers the "creative education" of influential Aotearoa/New Zealand art educator Elwyn Richardson, which is based on what he calls the "discovery method": the "concentrated study of material from [students'] own surroundings." Through a game that his students play with tyres, we explore the role that…

We employed principles from a nationally recognized prevention model on family support to investigate whether connecting vulnerable children to community-based programs and services through a statewide intervention system, the "Help Me Grow" program, strengthens parents' perceptions of protective factors. We used a parent survey modeled…

Four experiments examined how faces compete with physically salient stimuli for the control of attention in 4-, 6-, and 8-month-old infants (N = 117 total). Three computational models were used to quantify physical salience. We presented infants with visual search arrays containing a face and familiar object(s), such as shoes and flowers. Six- and…

Two assumptions that underlie much research in early childhood music education are that music is a social endeavor and musical participation is beneficial to children's overall social development. As members of cultural and social groups, young children engage with music in a multitude of ways and with different companions. This article examines…

Read It Again (RIA) is a curriculum for pre-kindergarten (pre-K) classrooms that targets children's development of language and literacy skills. A cluster randomized trial was conducted in which 104 pre-K classrooms in the Appalachian region of the United States were randomly assigned to one of three study conditions: Control (n = 30), RIA only…

Problems of appearing and functioning of human study science, i.e. pedology, have been studied in the paper. Theoretical analysis of integrative approaches of native and foreign scholars to pedology in the context of views of the third millennium has been performed. Useful and positive achievements of this science as well as wrong ones determined…