Regulatory aspects of development can best be understood by research that conceptualizes relations between cognition and emotion. The neural mechanisms associated with regulatory processes may be the same as those associated with higher order cognitive processes. Thus, from a developmental cognitive neuroscience perspective, emotion and cognition…

The theory-of-mind abilities of twins, children with nontwin siblings, and only children were compared to investigate further the link between number and type of siblings and theory-of-mind abilities. Three- to 5-year-old children with nontwin siblings outperformed both only children and twins with no other siblings, twins who also had other…

Prior research demonstrates that understanding theory of mind (ToM) is seriously and similarly delayed in late-signing deaf children and children with autism. Are these children simply delayed in timing relative to typical children, or do they demonstrate different patterns of development? The current research addressed this question by testing…

Brain research is complicated, but its message is simple: babies are born learning and what they learn is up to us. New research on infant brain development shows that a child's experiences in the first three years of life have a distinct impact on her later development and learning. Here's why. All babies are born with one organ that is not fully…

Do children have coexisting but contradictory beliefs about things like magic? Some patterns of behavior that seem to reflect contradictory beliefs may stem from children's recognition that their knowledge about events is incomplete and therefore things may occur without them understanding how. In addition, children may hold certain beliefs that…

In this study, we examined the system of case marking in two groups of German speaking children, 5 children with specific language impairment (SLI) and 5 typically developing (TD) children matched to the children with SLI on a general measure of language development. The data from both groups demonstrate high accuracy scores for structural case…

This study examined associations between foster mothers' emotional investment, assessed when foster children were age 2, and foster children's representations of self and others, assessed when children were age 5. Caregiver investment was assessed using a semi-structured interview called the ''This is My Baby'' interview (TIMB; Bates, B., &…

This review begins with a brief history from Piagetian perspective-taking development, through metacognitive development, and into the past and present field of theory-of-mind development. This field has included research on what infants and children know about a variety of mental states, on possible causes and consequences of mentalistic…

Three experiments examined developmental change in children's understanding of regret and relief, two second-order emotions whose quality depends on a comparison between reality and "what might have been." In Experiment 1, participants 7 years of age and older, but not 5-year-olds, made regret-related emotion-response judgments that took into…

Using grounded theory methodology, I establish family identity management as an important type of invisible work that connects women's household-based domestic activities with community members perceptions and treatment of them and their family members. Detailed observations of household routines and family interactions, as well as in-depth…

Linkage studies of complex phenotypes such as reading ability/disability (developmental dyslexia or reading disorder) and related componential processes, where the effects attributable to individual genes appear to be modest, are critically dependent on the nature and composition of the samples and the phenotypes analyzed. Thus, it might be…

An ideal of education is to ensure that our children develop into autonomous critical thinkers. The "indoctrination objection", however, calls into question whether education, aimed at cultivating autonomous critical thinkers, is possible. The core of the concern is that since the young child lacks even modest capacities for assessing reasons, the…

To examine the development of look duration as a function of age and stimulus type, 14- to 52-week-old infants were shown static and dynamic versions of faces, Sesame Street material, and achromatic patterns for 20 s of accumulated looking. Heart rate was recorded during looking and parsed into stimulus orienting, sustained attention, and…

In a study of the ability to reconstruct the times of past events, 86 children from 4 to 13 years recalled the times of 2 in-class demonstrations that had occurred 3 months earlier and judged the times of hypothetical events. Many of the abilities needed to reconstruct the times of events were present by 6 years, including the capacity to…

The emerging field of Evolutionary Computation (EC), inspired by neo-Darwinian principles (e.g. natural selection, mutation, etc.), offers developmental psychologists a wide array of mathematical tools for simulating ontogenetic processes. In this brief review, I begin by highlighting three of the approaches that EC researchers employ (Artificial…