Children develop a complex understanding of honesty, promise-keeping and secret-keeping during early school years. Yet, these concepts have largely been examined in isolation and little is known about how they develop together across relational contexts, particularly in relation to children's trust beliefs. We investigated how age-related changes in children's trust vary across these bases and relational contexts in Sweden and Turkey, two societies that differ markedly in trust beliefs. Children aged 7-10 years (N = 200) rated their trust towards familiar and unfamiliar targets across hypothetical scenarios tapping each trust base. In Sweden, developmental changes in trust depended on both the trust base and the familiarity of the target. In contrast, in Turkey, age-related changes were driven primarily by growing selectivity based on target familiarity rather than by the trust base. These findings suggest that how trust attitudes are developmentally organized across trust bases and relational contexts may be shaped by children's broader sociocultural environment.
Adults' mental state language (MSL), referring to and labelling cognitions, emotions and desires, is regarded as a key input to children's social-cognitive development. The Maternal Mental State Input Inventory (MMSII) offers a vignette-based approach to investigating adults' preferences for using MSL and elaborated language. This scoping review maps how the MMSII and its derivatives have been implemented across populations and contexts, catalogues adaptations, translations and administration formats and synthesizes findings related to child outcomes. Fifteen sources, representing 20 studies, met inclusion criteria. Participants were predominantly White, English-speaking mothers from Australia. Child data were available in 15 studies, primarily focusing on the preschool years. Across child-inclusive studies, parents' MMSII scores showed more significant than null associations with children's theory of mind. Collectively, the findings demonstrate the MMSII's adaptability and feasibility as a measure for assessing adults' MSL and elaborated language preferences.
Despite the plethora of evidence on the association of parental ethnic-racial socialization (ERS) and ethnic minority youth's mental health, the physiological stress-response mechanism that may explain such link has been rarely studied. In the current study, we investigated the relations between parental ERS and youth's chronic physiological stress, indexed by hair cortisol concentrations (HCC). Forty-eight Black and 38 Latino youth (Mage = 12.18 years, SD = 1.50) in the United States and their parents participated in the study. Parents reported ERS in terms of enculturation and preparation for bias. Youth's hair samples were collected and analysed for HCC. Results revealed that parental enculturation was significantly associated with lower levels of HCC. The importance of parental ERS in relation to ethnic minority youth's stress physiology is discussed.
Previous investigations link fine motor skills (FMS) with language development. Studies also examined relations between motor actions and gestures, as well as between gestures and language. However, little research has systematically investigated fine motor skills, manual gestures, and language within the same study or investigated their unique associations. In this study, we examined FMS, receptive and expressive vocabulary, narrative skills, and gesture production, imitation, and use during storytelling in 130 children (aged 3-6). FMS significantly predicted receptive vocabulary and narrative skills but not expressive vocabulary. Including manual gestures in hierarchical linear regressions reduced the association between FMS and receptive vocabulary as well as narrative skills. Notably, greater gesture use during the narrative task negatively predicted receptive vocabulary and narrative skills. Mediation analyses revealed that gesture use significantly mediated the link between FMS and both receptive vocabulary and narrative skills, indicating that gestures partially explain how FMS relate to these language outcomes. The study discusses limitations, future research needs, and educational implications.
This study examined how adolescents use Instagram as a coping resource and coping tool within the framework of the transactional theory of stress. We explored how perceived stress and resilience influence coping strategies and their links to life satisfaction. Participants were 375 Taiwanese high school students (73.3% female; M age = 16.7, SD = 0.7) who completed an online questionnaire assessing perceived stress, resilience, coping, life satisfaction and Instagram use. Habitual Instagram use was assessed via self-reported usage frequency and duration, engagement with platform features and reported changes in use under stress. Analyses focused on 280 adolescents who reported using Instagram to cope with stress. Four coping strategies were identified: problem-focused, emotion-focused, support-seeking and avoidance. Stress and resilience were associated with strategy use. Emotion-focused coping predicted higher life satisfaction across both low stress-high resilience and high stress-low resilience groups. Problem-focused coping was beneficial in the high stress-low resilience group, whereas support-seeking coping was effective only in the low stress-high resilience group. Findings underscore the nuanced role of social media in adolescent coping and its implications for adaptive interventions.
How are moral judgements about animals related to whether people eat meat? We investigate the developmental trajectory of this question in German participants aged 8 to 74 years (N = 571, M = 24.84, SD = 14.52, female n = 394, male n = 177). Applying Bayesian modelling, we find no differences in moral judgements about animals and meat-eating when comparing children who eat and who do not eat meat. With increasing age, however, we observe differences between dietary groups: while omnivorous participants show increasing speciesist beliefs and evaluate meat-eating as morally acceptable, vegetarians' and vegans' moral judgements remain lower in speciesism and opposed to meat-eating across age. Early adolescence is highlighted as a crucial phase in which eating behaviour and moral judgements start to align. In line with recent theoretical models, we discuss the role of diet in developing speciesism and its implications for the uptake of sustainable diets.
Socioeconomic status is a complex psychological construct linked to a number of professional and personal barriers, including cognitive deficits. Current explanations of the link between socioeconomic status and cognition focus primarily on influences of external factors on development, with less attention paid to internal psychological mechanisms operating in the present. In this review, I propose The Bucket Model of Socioeconomic Working Memory Disparities as a complementary framework, which attributes a portion of socioeconomic deficits in working memory to increased worry and social comparison. To accomplish this, I first summarize research linking socioeconomic status to cognitive outcomes. I then explore the role of working memory specifically in these links. Finally, I define The Bucket Model of Socioeconomic Working Memory Disparities, exploring possible pathways by which worry and social comparison divert resources away from working memory processes.
Infant social withdrawal is an early indicator of infant distress linked to adverse socio-emotional development. We hypothesized that parental sensitivity moderates an association between parental depression (PPD) and infant social withdrawal. We examined these associations cross-sectionally in 471 families in which mothers screened positive for PPD, assessing infant social withdrawal (mean infant age 3.6 months) during interactions with mothers, fathers/co-parents and a stranger. No significant association was found between parental PPD symptom severity and infant social withdrawal in interaction with either the parents or the stranger. Instead, parental sensitivity was negatively associated with infant social withdrawal in mother-infant interactions and less consistently in father/co-parent-infant interactions, though not in interactions with the stranger. Thus, in families at risk for PPD, infant withdrawal may be more closely related to parental sensitivity than parental depressive symptoms. Moreover, the influence of parental sensitivity on infant social withdrawal may not extend beyond parent-infant interactions.
This study examines the efficacy of JOINclusion, a serious mobile game designed to enhance ethnocultural empathy in children aged 8 to 12. Grounded in the Social Emotional Learning (SEL) framework, JOINclusion delivers interactive scenarios through a narrative-driven Story Mode and a collaborative Multiplayer Mode, encouraging emotional recognition, cognitive perspective-taking and prosocial decision-making. The game was evaluated using a pre-post design with 286 children across three European countries (Italy, Greece and the Netherlands). Two key outcomes were assessed: children's perceived educational benefit from the game and changes in ethnocultural empathy, specifically in empathic feeling/expression and perspective-taking. Findings indicated that most children reported perceived improvements in empathy-related skills after gameplay. Results from the pre- and post-comparison using Latent Change Score Models showed a significant increase in empathic perspective-taking and a marginal improvement in empathic feeling and expression. These effects were significant regardless of gender, age and migratory background. These findings support the potential of gamified learning experiences to foster inclusive social behaviour by promoting empathy-related competences. Despite its limitations, JOINclusion offers a promising, scalable model for integrating empathy training into diverse educational settings through engaging and child-centred technology.
Child development is cultural in nature, yet a divide persists between a (cross-)cultural developmental science niche alongside a seemingly a-cultural mainstream. In particular, childhood research relying on convenience sampling in often Western, post-industrial (i.e., WEIRD) societies rarely ventures into issues of culture and context, promoting excessive overgeneralization and false assumptions of what is considered 'typical' in child development. This article has two aims: First, it illustrates the cultural make-up of the communities traditionally overrepresented yet often unmarked in developmental science, while highlighting important variations within this cluster. Second, it demonstrates how this cultural make-up, in turn, is key to the methods employed, the findings produced and the theories postulated in developmental science. Regardless of where it is conducted, developmental science is a cultural endeavour and thus needs to grapple with its cultural foundations.
This study investigated the relationships between 24-h movement behaviours and both 'cool' and 'hot' inhibitory control in Chinese preschoolers. Sixty-six children aged 3-6 years participated in this study. Twenty-four hours movement behaviours were assessed using validated questionnaires measuring moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA), light physical activity (LPA), sedentary behaviour (SB), and sleep duration (SLP). 'Cool' inhibitory control was measured using the Fish Flanker task, while 'hot' inhibitory control was assessed via the Emotion Flanker task. Compositional data analysis (CoDA) and isotemporal substitution modelling were employed for statistical analysis. The results showed that 24-h movement behaviours were significantly associated with both 'cool' and 'hot' inhibitory control. Increased SB was negatively associated with both 'cool' and 'hot' inhibitory control. Longer SLP was positively associated with both 'cool' and 'hot' inhibitory control. LPA showed a significant negative association with 'hot' inhibitory control. Isotemporal substitution analyses revealed that increasing MVPA and SLP while reducing SB and LPA was associated with enhanced control performance. This study demonstrates significant associations between 24-h movement behaviour and inhibitory control in preschoolers. The findings support the development of comprehensive movement guidelines that optimize the balance between physical activity, sedentary time, and sleep to promote cognitive development in early childhood.
Visual attention span (VAS) is a critical predictor to Chinese reading, owing to the logographic and ideographic features of the script. However, the cognitive mechanisms linking VAS to reading remain under-explored, particularly regarding developmental trajectories and distinct reading outcomes. This longitudinal study examined how Grade 1 VAS predicts Chinese character reading fluency and reading comprehension in Grades 3 and 4, covering the crucial 'learning to read' to 'reading to learn' transition. The developmentally specific mediation of language-related cognitive skills including orthographic/phonological awareness, and rapid automatized naming (RAN) was examined. A cohort of 202 Chinese children (101 boys, 101 girls; Mage ± SD = 79.83 ± 3.86 months) were assessed at Grade 1 (T1), Grade 3 (T2), and Grade 4 (T3) on VAS, the language-related cognitive skills, character list reading fluency and reading comprehension. Results showed T1VAS predicted T2character reading fluency separately through T1orthographic awareness and T2RAN. Furthermore, a chain mediation involving these skills and T2fluency explained T3fluency. Meanwhile, T1VAS directly predicted T2reading comprehension and indirectly predicted T3comprehension via earlier decoding skills and prior comprehension. These findings establish VAS as a foundational component of Chinese literacy development, mediated by stage-specific mediating mechanisms. The results offer implications for designing early reading instruction tailored to the special demands of Chinese literacy.
Recent studies suggest that Turkish preschoolers exhibit a different pattern of theory of mind development than Western samples, particularly with respect to understanding the diversity of beliefs and knowledge acquisition. The present study posits that such differences extend to distinctions between understanding others' false belief and one's own representational change. Across two experiments, we found that preschoolers in Türkiye (n = 493; 249 Girls and 244 Boys) showed superior performance when asked a question about their own representational change compared with their understanding of another's false belief. These findings support the hypothesis that Turkish children attend to different facets of their own mental states, which might influence reasoning about their own representational change differently from others' false belief.
Gender stereotypes are prevalent in many societies and begin to emerge in early childhood. The present study examined the gender stereotypes and their association with age and gender in preschool. Gender stereotypes of feminine, masculine and gender-neutral traits and behaviours were collected in a sample of 104 German and Austrian children (52% girls) aged 3-6 years, using a 5-point rating scale. As expected, older children provided more gender-stereotypical responses. This association across age resulted primarily from an increase in extreme stereotypical and a decrease in counter-stereotypical associations. When comparing the gender stereotypes of boys and girls of different ages, younger girls already showed stronger gender stereotypes, while older girls showed more gender stereotype flexibility than boys at the same age. These findings provide new insights into preschool boys' and girls' gender stereotypes.
This longitudinal study examined changes in the efficiency of the attentional system during the transition from preschool to school in children born very prematurely. Seventy-one Polish children participated: 34 born before 32 weeks of gestation (47.1% boys) and 37 full-term peers (48.6% boys). The Attention Network Task-Child Version was administered at ages 5 and 6. At age 5, very preterm children showed reduced efficiency in alerting and orienting compared to full-term children. By age 6, alerting efficiency improved in the preterm group, and no longer differed from the control group. However, group differences in attentional orienting persisted at the follow-up assessment at age 6. These findings suggested partial improvement in attentional functioning in very preterm children during early development, with persistent differences in attentional orienting compared to full-term peers.
This study scrutinised whether children's imitative tendency varied depending on the model's ethnicity in a multicultural nation, Malaysia. 123 Malaysian Chinese and Malay children aged four to six were shown how to complete two goal-oriented, tool-use tasks using either an inefficient but normative method or an efficient alternative. One-third of the children watched a demonstration by an ingroup model (Malaysian Chinese/Malay), another one-third watched a more-familiar outgroup model (a Westerner/White individual) and the remaining watched a less-familiar outgroup model (African). Children were also asked to rate their preference for each model and the models' knowledge of Malaysia. Children were equivalently likely to copy the inefficient tool use regardless of the model type, despite having a stronger preference and perceived model knowledge for their ingroup model. We also observed unexpected imitative patterns in a quarter of our sample. Our findings offered insights into the importance of considering cultural contexts when studying children's social learning.
Adolescents often exhibit significant emotional fluctuations. However, it remains unclear how the emotion regulation competencies of individuals in late adolescence evolve and the temporal relationships of their constituent elements. To explore the temporal changes in the network of emotion regulation competency and its core dimensions in late adolescents, this study conducted two follow-up surveys from November 2023 to May 2024, with a 6-month interval. Ultimately, valid data from 450 non-graduating high school students in China (Mage = 16.77, SD = .68) were analysed using longitudinal network analysis. The results indicate that although the overall mean scores slightly improved, the network structure and global strength remained stable over time. Centrality analysis indicates that Negative-Controlling experience is consistently the core dimension of the emotion regulation competency network in late adolescence, while Negative-Inhibiting behaviour serves as a key bridging dimension connecting the positive and negative sub-networks. Moreover, the importance of positive and negative emotion regulation competencies in the network is comparable, and their relative roles remain stable over time. These findings clarify the core and key bridging dimensions of the emotion regulation competency network in late adolescence and emphasize its cross-time stability.
Materialism and psychological insecurity are critical constructs in child and adolescent psychological adaptation, yet the directionality and dynamics of their relationship remain contested. This study employed a longitudinal cross-lagged panel network analysis to examine the temporal interplay between these constructs among migrant and non-migrant children, assessing a total of 1034 participants (374 migrants and 660 non-migrants) at two time points. Results revealed that (1) Materialism exerted a stronger predictive effect on psychological insecurity than vice versa. Specifically, the dimension 'success defined by possessions' emerged as the primary driver of insecurity across both groups. (2) Network structures differed systematically between groups: migrant children exhibited denser connectivity and stronger directional pathways from materialism to psychological insecurity. Within these networks, 'interpersonal insecurity' emerged as the most vulnerable node. These findings challenge traditional compensation mechanisms theories by highlighting the predominant role of materialism-particularly among children with migration experiences-in intensifying psychological insecurity. The study provides empirical support for the development of targeted, population-sensitive interventions aimed at fostering healthy psychological development in diverse youth populations.
The objective of the study was to translate and culturally adapt two important measures of theory of mind (ToM)-the Theory of Mind Inventory-2 (ToMI-2) and the Theory of Mind Task Battery (ToMTB)-into a Mandarin version (the ToMI-2-M and the ToMTB-M). The ToMI-2-M and the ToMTB-M were first developed through translation, expert validation, and a pilot study. Ninety-four autistic children and 43 verbal ability-matched non-autistic children (aged 2.5-8 years) were then tested to evaluate the psychometric properties of the two assessment tools. Both the ToMI-2-M and the ToMTB-M showed good internal consistency and test-retest reliability. Content validity was supported by an expert panel. Concurrent validity was supported by the two assessment tools' correlations with other ToM tasks, visual perspective taking, inhibitory control, and autistic characteristics. The discriminative validity was demonstrated by significantly higher scores of non-autistic children than autistic children on these assessment tasks. Age-related changes and the receiver operating characteristic curve analysis also provided support. The ToMI-2-M and the ToMTB-M showed good psychometric properties and represent useful tools for assessing ToM abilities of autistic children and non-autistic children.
Empathy is vital for social development in early childhood. This study investigates the empathy-related behaviours of 362 German and Canadian children (49.72% girls) aged 3 to 6 years (M = 60.65 months; SD = 11.43 months), focusing on responses to emotional distress. Using latent profile analysis, a person-centred approach, we identified four profiles with distinct empathy-related response patterns: prosocial, empathic, self-distressed and uninvolved. To further delineate these profiles, we examined associations between profile membership and social-cognitive and social-emotional competencies. Results suggest that temperamental surgency and moral self-concept differed across profiles. Self-distressed children were rated lower in surgency compared with other profiles, and prosocial children had higher moral self-concept than uninvolved children. Descriptively, profiles differed in emotion comprehension, with no significant post-hoc differences, whereas Theory of Mind and inhibitory control did not differ between profiles. These results provide novel insights into the complex interplay of factors associated with children's reactions to emotional distress, enhancing our understanding of empathy development and informing future research directions.
