When norms for maintaining cooperative networks are violated, humans try to cope in various ways. However, knowledge is limited regarding how children respond to transgressions. Across two experiments, we examined how 82 six-year-olds, predominantly of Japanese ethnicity (97.6%), choose among punishment, forgiveness, and non-intervention when addressing transgressions from a third-party perspective using a novel paradigm. In addition, we examined how an apology from the transgressor and intervention costs influence children’s moral intervention behaviors. In Experiment 1, Japanese children (N = 41) were presented with a transgressor who either did or did not apologize. Contrary to the previous assumption that children are highly inclined to moral intervention even when it is costly, punishment was the least selected option and non-intervention was the most selected. Children who initially showed reluctance to intervene in transgressions then flexibly adjusted their choice to show forgiveness in response to the transgressor’s apology. In Experiment 2, as in Experiment 1, Japanese children (N = 41) avoided costly punishment and predominantly chose non-intervention. However, when punishment involved no personal cost, children were more likely to choose punishment and less likely to choose no intervention. These findings demonstrate that, when presented with multiple options, 6-year-olds engage less actively in punishment or forgiveness than previous work has suggested, and their intervention strategies are sensitive to social cues and personal costs. This research provides novel insights into the development of moral decision-making in early childhood.
A strong foundation in arithmetic relies on conceptualizing the equals sign as a symbol of equivalence. However, it remains unclear whether equals sign understanding predicts equivalence performance beyond arithmetic fluency. In this preregistered study, we examined these relations in a sample of 277 pupils (Mage = 11.4, SD = 0.3; 48% girls) in their final year of primary school. Despite almost all pupils recognizing the equals sign, most interpreted it as a signal to perform a calculation or provide an answer. Some demonstrated an emerging understanding of the symbol as an equivalence relation, defining it as a link between two expressions of the same value or, less frequently, recognizing that equal expressions can be interchanged. This equal value conceptualization significantly predicted both additive and multiplicative equivalence fluency, even after controlling for arithmetic fluency and gender. Notably, this understanding explained more variance in multiplicative than additive tasks, suggesting that multiplicative equivalence may be more demanding for learners. These findings suggest that while arithmetic proficiency is important for success on equivalence problems, knowledge of the relational meaning of the equals sign also plays a role, particularly in more complex equivalence contexts. Overall, the results highlight the need for instructional approaches that extend beyond practice in solving equations by explicitly supporting pupils’ reasoning about equivalence.
Training kindergarteners to count on their fingers has been shown to improve their performance in addition. However, it remains unclear whether these benefits depend specifically on the finger dimension of the training program or more generally on its counting dimension. This study addresses this question in a sample of 190 preschoolers aged 4-5 years. Two training settings, finger counting and counting on a number line, were compared to a business-as-usual condition. The results first show that the positive effect of finger counting training observed in kindergarteners extends to preschoolers. Critically, finger counting led to greater improvement in children's addition performance than counting on a number line training, which did not produce significant gains. These findings, indicating that the finger dimension plays a central role in supporting children's arithmetic skills, are discussed in the context of the embodied cognition framework.
A central question in children’s social and cognitive development is how they represent people as belonging to one or more domains of activity and how they judge those individuals’ capabilities within those domains. The present research examines whether category-focused language (e.g., “scientist”), which marks domain membership as a bounded identity, versus action-focused language (e.g., “someone who does science”), which frames participation as non-exclusive, influences children’s and adults’ categorization, cross-classification, and ability judgments of others and themselves across science, arts, and sports. In Study 1, children and adults categorized and judged others’ abilities. In Study 2, children and adults did so for themselves. Study 1 showed that language had minimal impact on categorization and ability judgments about others; age group was the primary factor. Study 2 revealed that language was related to self-relevant categorization and ability judgments, with effects differing across children and adults and across the type of response. Category-focused language was associated with children more likely to classify themselves into a single domain and adults more likely to endorse cross-classification. Action-focused language was associated with children’s lower ability judgments within a single domain but more positive ability judgments across two domains. These findings show subtle linguistic cues can shape beliefs about category membership and ability, particularly in self-relevant contexts, and underscore the need to examine categorization and ability judgments across domains.
Understanding how children represent others' visual perspectives is fundamental to early social-spatial cognition. Level-2 visual perspective taking (VPT) requires children to transform their own spatial reference frame to represent how a scene appears from another viewpoint-a process that places substantial demands on executive function (EF). However, the cognitive mechanisms through which bodily experience relates to children's performance on Level-2 VPT tasks in early childhood (i.e., which specific EF components mediate this association) remain poorly understood. The present study examined the embodied account of Level-2 VPT that gross motor skills are associated with Level-2 VPT through one or more EF components-inhibitory control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility. Participants were 213 Chinese preschool children aged 3-6 years who completed standardized assessments of gross motor skills, EF components, and Level-2 VPT. Parallel multiple mediation analyses were conducted controlling for child age, gender, and family socioeconomic status. Results showed that gross motor skills were positively associated with all EF components and that cognitive flexibility, but not inhibitory control or working memory, mediated the association between gross motor skills and Level-2 VPT. These findings highlight gross motor skills as an important embodied context for children's Level-2 VPT performance and provide evidence that cognitive flexibility constitutes the primary executive mechanism underlying Level-2 VPT in early childhood.
This study investigated the associations between executive function (EF), spatial skills, and both the average levels and developmental trajectories of building complexity in preschoolers during block play, across two instructional contexts. Data were drawn from a large block play intervention study that included three conditions: free play, semi-structured, and business-as-usual (BAU). Intervention included 15-minute small group sessions that occurred twice per week for eight weeks. The present sample focused on 142 preschoolers (Mage = 54 months) who were randomly assigned to the free play and semi-structured conditions. Only participants in these two conditions engaged in block-play sessions, thereby yielding data on block-building complexity. Results indicated that children in both conditions generally showed a decline in building complexity scores over the 8-week intervention. However, after the introduction of picture prompts, children in the semi-structured condition exhibited an initial decline followed by subsequent improvement in block building complexity, whereas no clear patterns were observed in the free play condition. There was a significant positive association between children’s baseline spatial skills and their average building complexity across the intervention, which aligned with the hypothesis. Marginally significant positive associations were observed between baseline aggregate EF and the developmental change of building complexity over the course of the intervention. Implications for future research are discussed.
Infants can represent the quantity of a set of hidden objects, but if the number of objects hidden in a location exceeds three, infants experience "catastrophic forgetting", failing to represent even a subset of the objects. Infants' representations of an object also are impacted by other agents' visual access to an object; infants represent what an agent observed about an object instead of what they themselves observed. Here, we asked whether an agent's partial visual access to a set of objects would impact infants' representations of the set's quantity, and if so, whether this impact would apply when infants' own representational limits are exceeded. Ten-14-month-olds (n = 85) completed an ordinal choice task in which they watched an experimenter distribute different quantities of crackers across two containers, and were allowed to crawl to one of the containers to obtain its contents. We manipulated whether the quantities hidden were within or outside of infants' capacity limits (1 vs. 2 or 1 vs. 4) and whether a second experimenter, who infants saw had also observed the crackers being distributed, had partial knowledge of the arrays (observing 1 vs. 1 or 1 vs. 2, respectively) or no knowledge. Infants' container choices suggested that they used the observing agent's perspective to represent quantity whenever she had partial knowledge of the arrays. Our results suggest that an agent's quantity representations may mandatorily supplant infants' own, and this may allow infants to represent a subset of objects in situations in which they would normally experience catastrophic representational failure.
BACKGROUND:Fine-motor difficulties are associated with adverse educational, physical and socioemotional outcomes. Multiple tools are used to assess these difficulties. The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) distinguishes body function, activity and participation as separate domains requiring measurement. We examined whether scores from measures sampling these domains align sufficiently for the tools to be treated as interchangeable. METHODS:Data were collected across four groups: (i)a whole-school sample(n = 415); (ii)a nested subsample with teacher-identified handwriting difficulties(n = 91; not independent of the whole school sample); (iii)a multi-school sample with teacher-identified handwriting difficulties(n = 172); and (iv)a clinical sample referred for occupational-therapy assessment(n = 33). Measures included the relevant fine-motor subscales of the Movement Assessment Battery for Children, Clinical Kinematic Assessment Tool, DCD Questionnaire, Detailed Assessment of Speed of Handwriting, and Beery-Buktenica Developmental Test of Visual-Motor Integration. Correlation and linear regression quantified observed-score associations and shared variance. Principal component analysis was used as exploratory data reduction. RESULTS:Cross-tool associations were generally small, if significant. Regression models showed that any given tool predicted only a small proportion of variance in scores on the remaining tools (approximately 1-22 %). Principal component analyses consistently yielded multiple components, with scores from different tools often represented on different components. CONCLUSION:Measures commonly described as assessing fine-motor skills were not sufficiently aligned to be treated as interchangeable, consistent with the tools sampling different combinations of ICF domains and task demands. An ICF-informed assessment battery may provide a more useful basis for characterising need and planning targeted support than reliance on a single score.
OBJECTIVE:To examine whether toddlers' IC-related performance differed across classroom periods with and without sound-absorbing materials. METHODS:A field-based alternating intervention was conducted in a Japanese nursery classroom (N = 30; age = 24.3-39.3 months). Sound-absorbing materials were installed during two phases and removed during an intervening phase. Existing classroom recordings from four days in each phase were analyzed to characterize sound levels and reverberation times were measured across two phases. IC was assessed using a delay-of-gratification task and analyzed using logistic mixed-effects models. Teachers also completed the Self-Regulation Assessment Scale for Early Childhood for a subset of children. RESULTS:Modest reductions in reverberation time and sound levels were observed during the phases with the sound-absorbing materials installed. Children showed significantly higher odds of task success during both With-installation phases than during the Without-installation phase, although individual response patterns were heterogeneous. The proportion of children waiting successfully for 300 s was lowest during the Without-installation phase, but substantial individual variability was observed. Teacher ratings collected for a limited subset of children showed a broadly similar pattern. CONCLUSIONS:Toddlers' IC-related performance differed across classroom periods with and without sound-absorbing materials. These findings provide preliminary field-based evidence that the classroom intervention may have modified multiple aspects of the classroom environment, including teachers' behaviors and teacher-child interactional processes, thereby contributing to variation in toddlers' IC-related performance. Future studies should determine the relative contributions of acoustic and non-acoustic pathways underlying these intervention-related changes.
Digital tools and applications are now a common part of young children’s daily lives. While excessive screen time and media usage may have negative effects on children’s development, well designed cognitive apps have the potential to support children’s learning. We investigated the effect of a seven-week intensive cognitive training programme on young children’s near- and far-transfer skills. We additionally gathered survey data from parents to gain further insights into children’s learning, media usage and observed skills at home. Sixty-three children and families participated in the study (Agemean = 55.46 months, AgeSD = 3.76). Children were divided into three groups with long-term training, short-term training, and an active control condition. Linear mixed model analysis showed that the app-based cognitive training intervention had only limited effects on young children’s outcome scores. While children’s performance improved over time in both near- and far-transfer tasks, these effects did not go beyond practice effects. There were some noteworthy effects and trends involving children’s cognitive and early academic skills (e.g., literacy outcomes). Correlation analysis provided further insights into children’s learning of cognitive skills in the home environment and literacy skills. Executive function difficulties also showed significant associations with numeracy and literacy tasks. These results point out the need for more targeted and individualized early cognitive training interventions and highlight the importance of considering the home environment as a potentially contributing factor in future interventions.
Prosocial behaviors like collaboration and sharing are key to early childhood development. This study examined how collaboration, sex, and friendship influence sharing and perceived friendship among 48 dyads (96 children) aged 4-6. Participants were recruited from primary schools and paired into same-sex or cross-sex dyads. They were randomly assigned to either a collaborative or parallel play condition involving a cheese board game. In the collaborative condition, children worked together on one board, whereas in the parallel condition, they played individually on separate boards. After the game, children faced unequal rewards hidden under cups-one child received three candies ("lucky"), the other one candy ("unlucky"). Children then had the opportunity to share their rewards during a one-minute period without adult supervision. Friendship levels were assessed using a visual scale before and after the game. Children shared rarely, and contrary to our predictions, sharing behavior was not affected by collaboration, sex, dyad composition, or friendship level. However, both collaborative and parallel play led to increases in friendship ratings, suggesting that engaging in a shared activity and spending time with a peer may be associated with more positive evaluations of the relationship. No differences emerged between collaborative and parallel play in terms of this increase. The study highlights that prosocial sharing is sensitive to task design and social context, especially perceptions of ownership, while collaborative and parallel play may foster emotional bonds rather than generosity. These findings emphasize the importance of social tasks and positive social experiences in promoting prosocial development in early childhood.
Although recent theoretical accounts suggest potential links among interoceptive processing, functional body representations, and navigation, these domains have rarely been examined together across development, and little is known about how their organization may differ between childhood and adulthood. The present study investigated age-related differences in these three domains and their organization by comparing school-aged children and young adults. In a cross-sectional study, 138 school-aged children (7-8 and 9-10 years) and 96 young adults (18-35 years) completed six tasks assessing interoceptive accuracy, configurational and action-oriented body representations, and landmark, route, and survey knowledge of a virtual environment. Regarding cardiac interoceptive accuracy, mixed-design analyses did not provide evidence of age-related differences. In contrast, functional body representations showed possible distinct developmental trajectories: configurational body representation may reach an adult-like level by the age of 9-10 years, whereas action-oriented body representation may continue to develop beyond this stage. Concerning navigational space development, landmark and route knowledge were comparable across age groups, whereas young adults were more accurate than both child groups in survey knowledge. In addition, exploratory factor analyses suggested that the organization and coupling of these domains may vary across age groups. Overall, the findings suggest possible differences in the developmental trajectories of interoceptive, bodily, and navigational representations and provide preliminary evidence for age-related variation in their organization.
Identity fusion is a strong form of group alignment, in which individuals experience a visceral sense of oneness with the group, motivating extreme forms of pro-group action. However, little is known about the emergence and development of identity fusion across the lifespan, largely due to the absence of validated assessment tools for children. The Dynamic Identity Fusion Index (DIFI) has proven to be an effective and efficient measure of identity fusion in adults and the present study aims to validate its use in children. Our findings indicate that fusion with ‘own family’ versus an unfamiliar family can be reliably measured in children aged 6 to 10 years. Criterion validity was supported through correlations with other measures of identity fusion, and discriminant validity from social desirability and personality traits was also established. However, results for temporal stability after three months were inconclusive, and evidence for convergent and predictive validity could not be confirmed. Potential methodological explanations for these limitations are discussed. Overall, this study is a first and important step toward understanding the development of identity fusion in childhood and provides a foundation for future research.
Forgiveness plays a crucial role in social functioning, particularly in collectivist cultures such as China, where relational orientation and group harmony are highly valued. Children's forgiveness is shaped by multiple social cues, including the transgressor's intention, apology, and the social perspective from which the transgression is evaluated. However, how these cues jointly influence forgiveness in a collectivist context remains underexplored. This study employed scenario-based experiments to investigate how Chinese children aged 4-6, assigned to either a victim or a bystander perspective, integrated transgressors' intentions and apologies in forgiveness. Experiment 1 (N = 136) examined the effects of transgressor intention (intentional, unintentional) and social perspective (victim, bystander) on children's forgiveness. Experiment 2 (N = 313) further explored the interaction between intention and apology (apologetic, unapologetic) across perspectives. The results showed that children were more likely to forgive unintentional and apologetic transgressors, and that bystanders showed greater forgiveness than victims; apologies moderated the influence of intention on children's forgiveness; perspective further influenced how children balanced intention and apology in their forgiveness. Overall, this study represents an initial step toward understanding children's forgiveness in a collectivist cultural context.
Drawing on intergroup contact theory, this study investigated how 8- to 11-year-old American children's (N = 262, 55% girls, 52% White, in 2024 and 2025) direct contact with immigrants (e.g., at school) and perceptions of their parents' attitudes about them spending time with immigrants (comfortable or uncomfortable) informed their own attitudes about immigrant groups. More direct contact was associated with more positive attitudes, specifically, liking immigrants more and seeing immigrants as more American (βs = .16 and .20). At the same time, children who perceived their parents to be more comfortable with immigrants also liked immigrants more, felt closer to them, and were more interested in including them in their own activities (βs = .56, .28, and .40). These associations were comparable for children's attitudes about peers from Mexico, China, India, El Salvador, Nigeria, and Poland even though the sample had, on average, more frequent contact with people from some of those groups than with others. In an increasingly diverse country with a complex history around immigration, this new evidence is a helpful first step to understanding how American children integrate their personal experiences and perceptions of their parents' beliefs to form their own attitudes about immigrant groups.
Whether the meaning of symbolic numerals is represented by the approximate number system (ANS) is a subject of long-standing interest, with contradictory results reported across educated adults and developing children. To resolve past discrepancies, we investigated the time required to make judgments of numerical inequality across an expansive numerical spectrum (1-999) and range of ratios (1.125-4.5) in 217 children (ages 4-12) and 66 adults. Testing an experience-dependent framework, Study 1 evaluated whether the relative fluency of symbolic and non-symbolic processing changes with age according to the power law of practice. As predicted, the law provided an excellent fit to the data, with cognitive efficiency progressing through three range-dependent phases (prefluent, fluent, and overlearned) that tracked the ecological frequency of numbers. Study 2 evaluated cross-format switch costs, revealing a significant age-by-range interaction. Young children exhibited deeply negative switch costs for triple-digit numbers, with switch costs systematically rising with age. Rather than showing a number-wide overhaul, the data suggest that the time required to process symbolic magnitudes decreases as a non-linear function of experience.
Our study examined how children and adults evaluate retaliatory transgressions, with particular attention to whether a retaliatory act matched or mismatched the domain of the initial provoking act. Children ages 4-9 and adults (n = 153) judged the seriousness and punish-worthiness of moral and conventional transgressions that were either unprovoked or retaliatory. Across ages, moral transgressions were judged as more serious and more deserving of punishment than conventional transgressions, and unprovoked acts were often judged more harshly than retaliatory ones. Adults were generally more lenient than children, although over-retaliations did not receive much leniency from any age group. Developmental differences emerged primarily in judgments of conventional transgressions, with younger children judging retaliatory acts more leniently than unprovoked acts, whereas older children and adults did not. These findings suggest that the role of provocation in moral judgment changes across development and depends on the relationship between the provoking and retaliatory acts. Participants also judged victims as feeling better after retaliating, with this pattern strongest among adults. Together, these findings suggest that judgments of retaliation are shaped by developmental and contextual considerations, while perceptions of retaliation as emotionally beneficial increase with age.
