Hands are among the earliest and most socially meaningful body parts infants see, feel and use to act on the world. From birth, they provide a continuous source of visual and multisensory information, supporting exploration and emotion sharing. Yet the developmental origins of visual hand recognition, and particularly recognition of one's own hand, remain largely unknown.Here, we synthesize behavioral, neural, and developmental evidence to argue that hands hold a privileged status in early body representation. Dense multisensory exposure, continuous visual access, and early social use create a self-reinforcing loop that tunes infants to the form, movement, and meaning of hands.We propose a developmental framework in which early predispositions for body processing interact with visual and multisensory experience. These elements keep affecting one another forming a cycle that may support early hand-specific tuning, driven by the privileged role hands play in infants' perceptual, motor and social word. Testing this hypothesis offers a unique entry point into the origins of body ownership and agency, and provides new insights into the origins of bodily self-awareness and early social cognition.
Neural sensitivity to rhythm emerges prenatally, yet observable movement synchronization to an external beat occurs later and more gradually over development. Integrating findings from developmental psychology, neuroscience, music cognition, and social interaction research, we propose a triadic framework suggesting that infants' rhythmic synchronization emerges from the interaction of three components: rhythm perception, motor development, and social scaffolding. Based on this framework, early synchronization abilities may be present earlier than commonly assumed, but their expression depends on interactions between perceptual capacities, developing motor abilities and social scaffolding, providing predictive cues and reward. We further argue that the detection of early rhythmic behavior may depend on methodological and analytical approaches as infant rhythmic behavior is variable, context-dependent, and expressed intermittently. Methodological and analytical improvements are outlined to better capture the dynamic development of rhythmic coordination in infancy. Understanding variability in early rhythmic behavior will provide insight into developmental trajectories and be informative for identifying early markers of potential deficits in rhythm processing, which have been described in neurodevelopmental disorders.
The role early vocabulary plays in later language development and academic success has been widely acknowledged, and common developmental trajectories are known. Nevertheless, how general cognitive processes support individual trajectories of vocabulary development is not well understood. We explored this issue via a scoping review covering literatures on the relations between nine general cognitive processes (visual processing, visual/spatial attention, attention shifting, sustained attention, visual working memory, novelty detection, object recognition, statistical learning, and declarative memory) and vocabulary development. Processes were selected based on their instantiation in a successful neural-process model of word learning. Auditory processing and discrimination was also reviewed to inform future theory and model development. Systematic database searches were conducted for each process. Papers returned from three databases were screened, reviewed, and the relevant information for each process extracted. While the final number of included papers was limited, we found some evidence of links between nine of the processes and vocabulary development. Evidence of processing differences in children at risk for language impairment was also found for three processes. We discuss the revealed relations and gaps in the literature. We also provide a critical appraisal of the literature and implications for both theory and future work, highlighting the need for integrative longitudinal work and the usefulness of formal models in examining how multiple processes interact to support development.
This paper draws on theoretical concepts from several research areas within and outside of psychology to propose a more thoroughly social account of social-cognitive development. Key concepts are social location within a sociocultural matrix, interlocking social locations, power, social hierarchies, interdependent versus independent societies, epistemological communities, and psychological connections within a group. These phenomena both influence social-cognitive development and become concepts in children’s thinking about the social world. This perspective thus continues the movement away from a focus on decontextualized individuals thinking about individuals or dyads. It highlights large social structures (e.g., social stratification) and networks of minds (a “community of minds”). This framework also moves away from the focus on dominant social groups, and instead addresses perspectives of people in the margins who might draw on understudied aspects of social cognition. The paper reviews several research areas that provide support for these themes: social ingroups and outgroups, cognition about social inequalities, infants’ understanding of social relationships, a relational self concept, cognition in interdependent cultures, perspectives from nondominant social locations, recursive thinking, and intuitive sociology about social structures. This paper suggests some metaphors of developmental processes in this more social account and illustrates how the proposed framework would reconceptualize theory of mind. The focus on the role of large social structures and social networks would broaden, and provide a more balanced account of, social-cognitive development.
According to the Learning Theory of Attachment (LTA), attachment development results from the accumulation of distinct safety learning events in which children learn whether caregivers reliably alleviate stress by providing responsive support. Oxytocin is thought to play an important role in this learning process, yet its specific contribution to attachment development remains poorly understood. Recent theoretical work has reframed oxytocin as an allostatic hormone that modulates information processing, learning, and prediction to promote adaptive behavior, with behavioral flexibility proposed as the core expression of this function. In the current contribution, we integrate predictions from the allostatic theory of oxytocin with the LTA to provide a novel perspective on how oxytocin may influence attachment development in different caregiving environments. Building on conceptualizations of both secure and insecure attachment as organized, context-sensitive adaptations, we propose that oxytocin contributes not only to secure attachment development in responsive caregiving contexts, but also to the emergence and maintenance of insecure attachment strategies. This framework identifies key questions for future research on the neurobiological mechanisms underlying attachment development, with the potential to yield novel insights into how oxytocin tunes individuals to their early environment and, in doing so, influences lifelong behavior.
Forgiveness is fundamental to human sociality and cooperation. But to forgive others uncritically carries consequences for the self and for the moral functioning of the wider social group. In this article, we argue that practicing selective forgiveness is an important social strategy, and detail the sociomoral conditions under which forgiveness may be prescribed or proscribed. By synthesising the developmental literature, we further outline the age around which children learn of and use these particular conditions to caveat their forgiveness. Despite the benefits bestowed by interpersonal forgiveness, our review suggests preschool children already recognise its limits. Further research into the boundaries and scope of forgiveness during childhood and beyond promises to shed light on the nature, nuance, and ethics of forgiveness.
Infant-directed speech (IDS) is a specialized speech register widely believed to play an important role in early development. IDS research has been predominantly WEIRD-centric (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic) and English-focused, limiting our understanding of how it varies across diverse linguistic and cultural contexts. Although IDS is often assumed to be universal, cross-cultural evidence reveals both common patterns and meaningful variation. In this review, we examine Middle Eastern (ME) IDS—an underexplored area in cross-cultural research—by comparing it with Western IDS across prosodic, phonological, lexical, syntactic, and pragmatic modifications. Emphasizing the role of culture in shaping caregiver–infant interaction, we suggest that while IDS is present across many cultural contexts, its specific features, including lexical choices and interactional styles, may be influenced by sociocultural values. We further evaluate methodologies widely used in infant language research, with particular attention to the Language ENvironment Analysis (LENA) system, originally developed for English-speaking households. We discuss LENA's technical challenges that are exacerbated in ME contexts characterized by multi-speaker and multi-generational caregiving environments, including speaker classification and overlapping speech. Ethical challenges in ME settings are also examined, including issues of consent and authority, as well as privacy and confidentiality. Building on these concerns, we propose methodological considerations for adapting infant language research tools to ME contexts. Overall, this review advances a culturally grounded perspective on IDS and underscores the need for culturally responsive methodologies in infant language research.
This article reviews the effect of domain on age-related differences relating to a variety of decision making phenomena: decision avoidance, preferences for choice sets and options, information search and avoidance, delay discounting and reward-related preferences, risk attitudes and taking, framing effects, and decision satisfaction or quality. Variations in findings suggest that in comparison to financial and consumer choice contexts, the magnitude of age-related differences is often different in health and social contexts. Potential mechanisms associated with these patterns include the self-relevance and emotional meaningfulness of decision domains (sensu the Selective Engagement Hypothesis and Socioemotional Selectivity Theory), goal pursuit and resource allocation, opportunities for decision making, domain-specific knowledge and self-efficacy, historical and cultural differences, as well as the confounding influence of other task characteristics (e.g., reliance on numbers to describe choice options): It can be assumed that older adults have both more experience making health-related choices and consider them more relevant (especially when in poor health). This, in turn, may motivate older adults to recruit more cognitive resources when making health-related decisions. In addition, older adults' greater focus on close social relationships may explain why findings relating to social rewards fluctuate in comparison to financial rewards. Implications for study design – for example with respect to sample size considerations, the inclusion of middle-aged participants, currently understudied domains, and the diversity of items or scenarios recruited – are discussed.
Social groups and categories are fundamental to how individuals understand themselves and others across the life span. The model of the dual age identity proposes that individuals hold two interrelated identities: (a) a fluid age-group identity that shifts as people grow older (e.g., teenager, young, middle-aged, and old people) and (b) a more enduring, permanent generational identity tied to shared historical experiences (e.g., Greatest Generation; Baby Boomer; Generation X; Millennials; Generation Z). These two identities often have opposing psychological consequences. As individuals age, they often distance themselves from older adults in response to negative age stereotypes, while simultaneously increasing their identification with their generation, which represents a psychological resource. In this review, we synthesize emerging evidence on dual age identity from two complementary perspectives: (1) an intragroup perspective conceptualizing generational identification as a resource for agency, continuity, and well-being, and (2) an intergroup perspective that highlights how relations between generations shape identity formation and intergenerational perceptions. Together, this research provides new insights into how dual age identity develops, when it becomes salient, and why it matters for development and aging, highlighting how individuals adapt to aging-related change and understand their social place in a rapidly-changing world.
Ethnic-racial identity formation is a key developmental task for children and adolescents, particularly for minoritized groups, but also for majority group students, as it can prompt them to challenge systemic racism and oppression. Whereas much research on ethnic-racial identity has focused on the family’s role, syntheses examining the school context are lacking. This systematic review focuses on diversity climate in schools (how schools approach ethnic, racial, and cultural diversity) and students’ ethnic-racial identity development. We present the identity-in-context framework, which predicts reciprocal links between diversity climate dimensions and ethnic-racial identity, integrates complex explanatory models (e.g., interactions between climate and identity), and acknowledges the roles of factors at different levels, including developmental stages, social position variables, school/class context, and the broader sociopolitical environment. We then review 22 studies (10,709 K-12 students) that examined 63 combinations of identity (exploration, resolution, centrality, affect, public regard) and school diversity climate dimensions (optimal contact conditions, multiculturalism climate, critical consciousness climate, colorblind climate, polyculturalism climate). Findings revealed active research areas (e.g., contact conditions and affect) and gaps (e.g., colorblind climate across identity dimensions). Consistent with the framework, we found mixed evidence for optimal contact conditions but mostly positive results for multiculturalism climate. A multiculturalism climate affirming students’ backgrounds was more strongly linked to ethnic-racial identity than one focusing on learning about diversity. There were indications that critical consciousness climate is especially relevant for exploration and for majority group students. Our work integrates isolated findings into the identity-in-context framework, identifies field challenges, and suggests future research directions.
Much of what we know about word learning comes from experimental paradigms that treat the extraction of word forms (segmentation) and the assignment of meaning (mapping) as separable processes. Although this division has yielded important insights, it may underestimate how their coordination supports learning in natural environments. Evidence from statistical segmentation—a widely studied mechanism for word discovery—suggests that representations derived from auditory statistics are often fragile and short-lived. These observations raise a critical question: how do children build stable lexical knowledge from initially fragile representations? Drawing on prior interactive accounts of segmentation and meaning mapping, we argue that semantic integration plays a distinct role in memory by helping to stabilize nascent word representations. This integration may be especially important under the sparse and acoustically variable conditions of natural speech, where learners must resolve uncertainty about linguistic relevance while balancing stability with flexibility. We outline testable hypotheses and propose specific indices for assessing robustness in word learning.
Mother-child communication is crucial for children's development. However, the mental health status of the mother can influence this communication. One of the most common mental health challenges faced by mothers is depression, which may lead to delayed language and dysregulated emotional development for the child. The purpose of this scoping review was to identify the effects of depression of mothers with children under age five, on various domains of communication, including affect, physical touch, gaze, and speech measures. Using keywords related to Maternal Mental Health and Mother-Child Communication, a search was conducted within the PsychINFO, PsychArticles, PubMed databases. After identifying 37 articles that met eligibility criteria, we extracted data related to maternal mental health concerns (i.e., depression or comorbid depression and anxiety) and communication variables (i.e., speech, touch, affect, gaze). These data were then qualitatively summarized. Findings revealed that maternal depression may influence a mother's tone and pitch, level of physical touch, and gaze synchronization. Consequently, this impacts the child's communicative and emotional development, as they may be less likely to engage with or seek comfort from their mother. This scoping review identified that maternal depression can impact various domains of communication. These findings highlight the importance of supporting maternal mental health needs as a key piece of child development.
This meta-analytic review examines relations between peer victimization and academic functioning through the lens of ecological systems theory. We explored evidence that victimization-achievement effect sizes across studies are systematically related to contextual features (national setting, ethnic/racial composition, academic norms of samples, and developmental stages). Meta-analyses included 121 effect sizes from 54 studies (N = 125951; 62,374 girls) based on children and adolescents from North America, East and Southeast Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. Results showed a small main effect (r = −0.12). Effect sizes were dependent on national setting (China vs the US), sample academic norms, developmental stage of peer group (childhood vs. adolescence), and gender. Taken together, these findings provide evidence that the academic adjustment of bullied youth can be influenced by interconnected environmental factors.
Parental mentalization is parents’ capacity to understand and interpret their child’s behaviors in terms of underlying mental states. It has been shown to be an important predictor of children’s socioemotional development. Different constructs of parental mentalization have been developed and investigated in distinct research lines. These include reflective functioning, mind-mindedness, insightfulness and parental embodied mentalizing. While all constructs are subsumed under the umbrella term parental mentalization, empirical relations between them are unclear. The present meta-analysis examines the relations between the constructs of parental mentalization, guided by the overarching question on how to conceptualize the umbrella term parental mentalization. We introduce two perspectives: First, a view assuming that a uniform underlying construct, a common capacity, of “parental mentalization” accounts for the different measures; Second, a view according to which parental mentalization consists of multiple dimensions that form a network of overlapping characteristics, interpreted through Wittgenstein’s notion of family resemblance. Furthermore, contributing to theoretical debates in the field, the analyses systematically compared three features of parental mentalizing: 1) Representational and interactional mentalizing, 2) self-reported and representational/interactional mentalizing, and 3) verbal and non-verbal mentalizing. Overall, 55 studies investigating the relations between constructs of parental mentalization were systematically reviewed. Meta-analyses were implemented for relations with at least 3 studies. Results showed significant, albeit modest relations between representational and interactional mentalizing, while results for self-reported and representational mentalizing as well as verbal and non-verbal mentalizing were mixed. These results are more consistent with the conceptualization of parental mentalization as multidimensional. Constructs of parental mentalization show complex and diverse empirical relations that reflect their conceptual overlap.
Sibling relationships represent a critical but underexamined context for the development of conflict management, emotion regulation, and social understanding. Although research across developmental, family, and social psychology has examined aspects of sibling conflict, the literature remains conceptually fragmented and methodologically inconsistent. This scoping review systematically mapped 57 peer-reviewed studies on sibling conflict management among children and adolescents ages 2-17 to clarify what is known, where gaps remain, and how the field can progress toward integrative models of relational development across developmental periods. Results revealed important developmental distinctions in how conflict management has been studied. Observational research on children has primarily examined behavioral strategies such as compromise, negotiation, submission, and aggression within contexts that often include parental mediation. In contrast, studies of adolescents more frequently rely on self-report measures and emphasize negotiation and compromise, although aggression and coercion remain heavily represented in quantitative studies. Across developmental periods, affective and relational processes such as emotional appeals, repair, and boundary maintenance have received comparatively limited empirical attention. Findings further highlight the importance of a developmental perspective, as the strategies studied and the methods used to assess conflict management vary across childhood and adolescence. Integrating insights from family systems theory, social learning models, and emotion socialization frameworks, this review proposes a conceptual foundation for understanding sibling conflict management as a developmental mechanism linking family dynamics to self-regulation, empathy, and long-term relational competence. The review concludes with recommendations for advancing theory, measurement, and intervention toward a more comprehensive, developmentally informed science of sibling relationships.
High-order action planning is the capacity to anticipate and organise two or more action steps before moving, requiring integration of cognitive, motor, and perceptual processes. High-order planning underpins goal-directed behaviour, enabling efficient problem-solving, skilled tool use, and adaptation to the environment. Developmental research shows that high-order planning skills emerge gradually in childhood, with adult-like responses appearing in older childhood, depending on the task. This systematic review investigates the development of high-order action planning in manual tasks from infancy to adolescence. Following the PRISMA 2020 guidelines, we searched PubMed and Scopus and identified 37 relevant studies after screening. Behavioural and kinematic differences during movement indicate that children as young as three years exhibit adult-like performance in high-order planning in tasks with low motor requirements and show degrees of adaptation in tasks that detect graded adjustments. Non-adult-like performance in young children appears more attributable to motor constraints than to a lack of planning ability. Children show high interindividual variance and occasionally non-linear development until around eight years. Recent research has begun to disentangle the development of action planning from the development of cognition. Findings show that high-order action planning is more closely associated with motor-related skills than with high-level, abstract planning and cognition. We argue that future research should focus on inter-individual variance and adopt real-time, multimodal measures to reveal mechanisms underlying high-order action planning.
Adolescence is a critical developmental period during which peer relationships play a central role in shaping engagement in problem behaviors. Peer interactions in the digital age have shifted from occurring mostly in-person in school and through extracurricular activities to online environments mostly free from adult monitoring. Deviancy training, a well-documented microsocial mechanism of peer influence that involves the immediate action and reaction patterns in which problem behaviors are learned and amplified, has received limited empirical attention in digital spaces. Guided by key the components of social media identified by the Transformation Framework of adolescent peer relations (Nesi et al., 2018a, Nesi et al., 2018b) – asynchronicity, permanence, publicness, availability, cue absence, quantifiability, and visualness – the current review explores how deviancy training may or may not be transformed in the digital age. Conclusions highlight ways in which deviancy training may function mostly similarly in online and offline spaces, ways in which deviancy training may be amplified quantitatively (e.g., reach in digital spaces), and key examples of how deviancy training may be qualitatively transformed in online environments, with implications for future research and socially-conscious platform design.
Growing up bilingual has a remarkable influence on language processing and brain development in children, yet a systematic neurobiological overview remains elusive. The current review addresses this gap by collecting, summarising, and critically examining findings on the effect of bilingual experience(s) on brain development and language processing in infants, toddlers, and children, with a focus on neurobiological methodologies. In this review, we scrutinise the developmental (neural) trajectories of early and late bilingual children, based on 94 peer-reviewed articles. In early-immersive bilinguals, dual-language input influences various aspects of early language development and processing. For instance, they initially demonstrate delayed perceptual narrowing compared to monolinguals. Subsequently, during semantic and syntactic processing, bilinguals often demonstrate behavioural performance comparable to monolinguals; however, neuroimaging studies consistently reveal additional recruitment of executive function regions beyond the canonical language network. Furthermore, early bilinguals and monolinguals exhibit numerous differences in brain structure and function, indicating ongoing neural refinement and potentially more efficient language processing. Regarding second-language learning children (L2 learners), the focus is on the interaction between neural adaptation and language input. As input and proficiency increase, L2 learners demonstrate more mature ERP responses and greater activation within language-specific brain regions. In sum, this review highlights the dynamic neuroplasticity and distinct neural mechanisms linked to the bilingual experience from infancy onward. Finally, this review provides a comprehensive literature overview of the developing bilingual brain, emphasising the substantial impact of bilingualism on both language-specific and general cognitive networks, and highlighting possible future directions.
Understanding how humans identify with others is crucial for understanding social-cognitive development. Identification plays a key role in how children learn social norms and behaviors, and identifying with others is linked to cognitive and affective processes such as perspective-taking, imitation, and empathy. Additionally, research indicates identification may have implications for children’s learning from media characters as there is some evidence children’s identification with real people and media characters develop simultaneously. However, given methodological and operationalization differences and typical development of cognitive abilities (i.e., perceptual capabilities), gaps exist in the research on the developmental trajectory of identification with others and with media characters. This review: 1) provides a brief historical overview of identification conceptually; 2) highlights issues in contemporary research with defining and measuring identification with media characters; 3) outlines the developmental trajectory of identification with others and with media characters; 4) identifies gaps in the research on these parallel processes; and 5) makes recommendations for future research.
Counting—enumerating sets by establishing one-to-one correspondence with an internal counter—is fundamental to the invention and development of mathematics. Yet, dominant models assume that counting is abandoned over the course of learning as children achieve proficiency with basic arithmetic calculations (e.g., 2 + 3), being replaced by the retrieval of associations between operands (e.g., 2 + 3) and answers (e.g., 5) from long-term memory. Here we challenge this assumption, arguing that counting remains at the very heart of arithmetic fluency even in adults alongside associative retrieval. Using mental addition as our test case, we present evidence that associative models fail to account for key behavioral and neuroimaging findings. We then put forward the automatized counting hypothesis, a novel framework proposing that counting procedures initially used by children become progressively accelerated through practice until they operate unconsciously and effortlessly. Automatized counting may become so efficient that it may generate answers to simple addition problems as fast as (or faster than) retrieval of associations from memory, particularly for problems with small operands. Recognizing the role of counting in arithmetic development explains a range of problematic data for purely associative accounts. We present behavioral and neuroimaging evidence supporting our model and discuss its theoretical, educational, and clinical implications. Overall, counting should not be seen as a steppingstone to be abandoned, but as an enduring foundation of arithmetic skills. This view challenges the assumption that automaticity necessarily relies on associative retrieval, suggesting that procedural automatization might be fundamental to skilled performance across domains of symbolic knowledge.
