Developmental Science最新文献

{"title":"Exploring a Range of Potential Factors Promoting and Constraining EF in South African Preschoolers","authors":"Johanna Beukes,&nbsp;Caylee Cook,&nbsp;Steven J. Howard,&nbsp;Gaia Scerif,&nbsp;Christopher F. Sharpley,&nbsp;Robert Hart,&nbsp;Catherine Draper","doi":"10.1111/desc.70289","DOIUrl":"10.1111/desc.70289","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 \u0000 <section>\u0000 \u0000 <h3> Background</h3>\u0000 \u0000 <p>Socioeconomic disadvantage is widely associated with poorer cognitive and educational outcomes. However, emerging evidence suggests that children in low-income contexts may demonstrate resilience in executive function (EF) development. This study examined the predictors of EF in South African preschoolers from disadvantaged communities to identify modifiable, context-specific influences.</p>\u0000 </section>\u0000 \u0000 <section>\u0000 \u0000 <h3> Methods</h3>\u0000 \u0000 <p>125 Children (aged 3–5 years) and their caregivers were recruited from 15 early childhood centers in Cape Town. Children completed three tablet-based EF tasks from the Early Years Toolbox measuring working memory, inhibition, shifting, while caregivers reported on demographic variables, household assets, child sleep, child screen time, child exposure to violence, and parenting practices. Multiple linear regressions examined predictors of child EF, with exploratory analyses on a subset (<i>n</i> = 22) for hair cortisol analysis.</p>\u0000 </section>\u0000 \u0000 <section>\u0000 \u0000 <h3> Results</h3>\u0000 \u0000 <p>Older child age (<i>β</i> = 0.37, <i>p</i> &lt; 0.001), caregiver secondary education (<i>β</i> = 0.22, <i>p</i> = 0.003), and fewer sleep difficulties (<i>β</i> = –0.45, <i>p</i> = 0.042) significantly predicted higher child EF scores, together explaining 25% of variance. Household assets, screen time, violence exposure, and parenting scores were non-significant. In the subsample, hair cortisol concentration correlated positively with EF (<i>ρ</i> = 0.55, <i>p</i> = 0.009), suggesting potential adaptive calibration under adversity.</p>\u0000 </section>\u0000 \u0000 <section>\u0000 \u0000 <h3> Conclusions</h3>\u0000 \u0000 <p>Findings highlight that modifiable proximal factors (e.g., caregiver education and child sleep) shape EF development more strongly than socioeconomic indicators. Results challenge the presumed universality of SES-EF gradients and underscore the importance of culturally grounded, contextually validated measures for understanding resilience and early cognitive development in Majority World settings.</p>\u0000 </section>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":48392,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Science","volume":"29 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2026-10-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13662612/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149185313","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Positive Peer Groups Support Preschoolers’ Word Learning","authors":"Elise Breitfeld,&nbsp;Courtney N. Snoberger,&nbsp;Jenny R. Saffran","doi":"10.1111/desc.70294","DOIUrl":"10.1111/desc.70294","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Children learn language from their social partners, and differences in the behavior of these social partners can influence language learning outcomes. The literature largely focuses on adult caregivers; however, there is less clarity regarding the extent to which the social behavior of peers might also impact children's language learning. Children spend a large proportion of their time with peers once they enter preschool; peers are thus an important source of input for learning. Moreover, preschoolers are not just interacting with individual peers but also with groups of peers. To explore the impact of peers’ social behavior on preschoolers’ word learning, the present study manipulated peer behavior at two levels: individual peers and the peer group context. Forty-four preschoolers (36-60 months) completed a tablet task in which they watched a series of animated videos of a classroom. Participants were exposed to (1) either a positive or negative social group (manipulated between-subjects) and (2) a positive and negative individual (manipulated within-subjects). Participants were then taught four novel object-label pairings by the children in the video. We measured preschoolers’ accuracy in learning these novel object-label pairs. Overall, preschoolers learned the words above chance and there was no difference in learning from the positive and negative individual peers. However, participants learned words significantly better in the positive group than in the negative group. This pattern of results suggests that peer groups, and the overall affective context of children's learning environments, may play important roles in boosting preschoolers’ language learning trajectories.</p>","PeriodicalId":48392,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Science","volume":"29 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2026-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/desc.70294","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149128853","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Visual Sensitivities in Toddlers’ Hands Provide a Foundation for Shape Perception","authors":"Alfredo F. Pereira,&nbsp;Thomas Endejan,&nbsp;Linda B. Smith","doi":"10.1111/desc.70291","DOIUrl":"10.1111/desc.70291","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 \u0000 <section>\u0000 \u0000 <p>Human competencies in object recognition and category generalization implicate representations of the 3D geometry of objects. There is no accepted account of how such object-centric representations are formed. Toddlers’ manual and visual exploration of objects is strongly associated with their emerging abilities in object recognition and category generalization, although there is limited understanding of the processes that underlie this association. Building on Marr and Nishihara's seminal theory of shape, we proposed (1) that toddlers actively select views that optimize fundamental visual sensitivities for long extents and for edges oriented horizontally and vertically and (2) that these biased views result in the axis of the object's maximum elongation, the major axis, being stably present in the variable 2D shapes projected from the object to the eye. We analyzed the visual properties of toddlers’ (<i>n</i> = 90, 12–38 months) egocentric views as they manipulated objects. We observed a highly biased sampling of object views in which the major axis of the physical object is near maximal extension and oriented near horizontal or vertical, two properties that make the major axis stably determinable in the variable 2D shapes projected to the eye. The findings show how fundamental low-level visual sensitivities may play a critical developmental role in biasing behaviors that bias the input in ways that make hard computational problems tractable. The findings also provide an empirical agenda for research focused on the development of object-centric representations of 3D shape.</p>\u0000 </section>\u0000 \u0000 <section>\u0000 \u0000 <h3> Summary</h3>\u0000 \u0000 <div>\u0000 <ul>\u0000 \u0000 <li>\u0000 <p>We examined the visual properties of toddlers’ egocentric views of objects.</p>\u0000 </li>\u0000 \u0000 <li>\u0000 <p>We found that the generated views were a selective sampling of possible views that optimized foundational low-level visual properties for shape perception.</p>\u0000 </li>\u0000 \u0000 <li>\u0000 <p>The findings implicate strong intrinsic constraints on toddlers’ visual experiences of object views.</p>\u0000 </li>\u0000 \u0000 <li>\u0000 <p>The biases in the toddler generated views are consistent with class theories of object-centric representations of 3-dimensional geometry.</p>\u0000 </li>\u0000 </ul>\u0000 </div>\u0000 </section>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":48392,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Science","volume":"29 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2026-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/desc.70291","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149128850","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Evolution of Finger Counting Strategies in Addition: A Three-Year Longitudinal Study in Young Children","authors":"Marie Krenger,&nbsp;Jeanne Bagnoud,&nbsp;Catherine Thevenot","doi":"10.1111/desc.70293","DOIUrl":"10.1111/desc.70293","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In this study, the developmental trajectory of children's finger-based strategies for addition is described for the first time using a longitudinal design involving 207 children aged 4 ½ at the first testing point. Children were observed individually twice a year over a three-year period. The trajectory typically followed by children corresponds to the one theoretically described in the literature as supporting the gradual internalization of finger strategies and leading to the complete mentalization of the solving process. More precisely, children progressed from a modeling strategy in which each operand of an addition is represented on the fingers of each hand, through a concrete counting-on strategy, in which both operands are still represented but enumerated in a single continuous process, to a counting-on strategy, in which only one operand is kept in mind while the other is tracked on fingers. The frequent use of the concrete counting-on strategy between modeling and counting-on strategies supports Baroody's proposition that it serves as a transitional step between concrete and more abstract forms of numerical representation. However, the concrete counting-on strategy was associated with poor addition performance, suggesting that it corresponds to a reconstructive stage in which children gain new insights about numbers but lack the cognitive resources to fully capitalize on them. Overall, this study provides the first detailed description of the evolution of finger-based strategies toward the internalization of the addition solving process.</p>","PeriodicalId":48392,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Science","volume":"29 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2026-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13643818/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149128872","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Investigation of the Prolonged Impact of Severe Socioeconomic Hardship and Mother's Perceived Social Support on Neurocognitive Development in Young Children in the Rural Ecuadorian Amazon","authors":"Matthew L. Cook,&nbsp;Lisa K. Boyce,&nbsp;Spencer D. Bradshaw,&nbsp;Marcela Santos,&nbsp;Eduardo Ortiz,&nbsp;Gloria Balseca","doi":"10.1111/desc.70295","DOIUrl":"10.1111/desc.70295","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>Children living in conditions of severe socioeconomic (SES) hardship are at elevated risk for neurocognitive delays, yet most developmental neuroscience research has focused on children in high-income, Western populations, limiting our understanding of diverse developmental contexts. This study examined maternal perceived social support as a potential buffer against the stressors associated with SES hardship on child neurocognitive development in a longitudinal sample of Indigenous families in the rural Ecuadorian Amazon. Twenty-eight children (<i>M</i> age = 28.02 months at T1; 57.6 months at T2) participated in the study completing an assessment of early cognitive ability at T1 and an inhibition task while functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) measured cortical activation at T2. A three-level linear mixed model revealed a significant interaction between early cognitive ability and maternal perceived social support on functional activation. Specifically, children of mothers with high social support showed no association between early cognitive ability and cortical activation, while those with low support exhibited atypical patterns (hyper- or hypoactivation), suggesting that increased maternal perceived social support may help buffer the risk exposure of chronic stressors associated with SES hardship. These findings underscore the importance of culturally embedded social resources in promoting resilience among children facing cumulative risk. Supporting maternal social networks may be a promising pathway for improving child neurodevelopment in underrepresented, low-resource communities and contributes to more inclusive global models of brain development.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":48392,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Science","volume":"29 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2026-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149128918","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Choosing Not to Eat Meat: What Characterizes Independently Vegetarian Children?","authors":"Matti Wilks,&nbsp;Alexa Sacchi,&nbsp;Beatrice Turner,&nbsp;Paul Bloom","doi":"10.1111/desc.70292","DOIUrl":"10.1111/desc.70292","url":null,"abstract":"<p>A growing body of research has aimed to map the characteristics of extraordinary altruists—such as those who have donated a kidney to a stranger. However, this research has primarily focused on adults, and we know little about the development of extraordinary altruism. While children cannot donate their organs to strangers nor large portions of their income to charity, they can choose not to eat animals. In this study we examine <i>independent vegetarians</i> (i.e., children who become vegetarian while being raised in meat eating families) as a potential case-study of extraordinarily altruistic motivation. In retrospective adult (Study 1) and developmental samples (Study 2) of American participants, we compare independently vegetarian children to family vegetarians and non-vegetarians on measures of empathy/compassion, disgust sensitivity, cognitive reflection, fearful facial recognition, social dominance orientation, and speciesism. We find that both independent and family vegetarians were lower in speciesism and SDO, and higher in disgust sensitivity and empathy/compassion, with these differences emerging almost exclusively in the retrospective adult sample. Crucially, and contrary to our hypotheses, we find no differences between independent and family vegetarians, and discuss potential interpretations of this null result. These data offer new insight into a small body of literature about independent vegetarians and show that similar traits are associated with both family and independent vegetarianism.</p>","PeriodicalId":48392,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Science","volume":"29 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2026-10-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13640037/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149116839","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Three-year-old Children Make Explicit Metacognitive Judgments – If Asked Appropriately","authors":"Marlene M. Meyer,&nbsp;Marina Proft,&nbsp;Jan Engelmann,&nbsp;Hannes Rakoczy","doi":"10.1111/desc.70287","DOIUrl":"10.1111/desc.70287","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Metacognition—the capacity to represent and reflect upon our knowledge and its sources—is fundamental for higher cognition and learning. Developmental research suggests that the ability to make explicit metacognitive judgments emerges surprisingly late, not before school age. However, this research has assumed that metacognition is optimized for private reflection and therefore tested children's metacognitive judgments in individual settings. In contrast, recent theoretical approaches propose that explicit metacognition may have a primarily social function and should therefore become most evident in socio-communicative contexts. We tested this proposal across four pre-registered studies (<i>N</i> = 195). First, we conducted two studies in which 3- and 5-year-old children participated in a social version of a well-established metacognition task (<i>partial ignorance task</i>). Children had to communicate their uncertainty towards a cooperative partner who relied on their advice. Even 3-year-olds provided accurate metacognitive judgments under these conditions: They spontaneously and explicitly reported uncertainty when they were partially ignorant, but not when they were knowledgeable. Two control studies yielded mixed evidence regarding the question whether the enhanced metacognitive performance in the first two studies was indeed mainly due to the socio-communicative context rather than other factors. Overall, the current findings suggest that explicit metacognition manifests earlier in development than previously assumed and may be boosted in some—particularly socio-communicative—contexts.</p>","PeriodicalId":48392,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Science","volume":"29 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2026-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13625023/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149082606","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Differential Associations of Residential Greenspace and Built-Up Exposure With Children's Executive Function Components: A Cross-Sectional Study","authors":"Yongbo Wang,&nbsp;Xin Zhao","doi":"10.1111/desc.70288","DOIUrl":"10.1111/desc.70288","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>Research increasingly links neighborhood environments to children's cognition; however, whether residential greenspace and built-up exposure show different associations across executive function (EF) components in middle childhood remains unclear. Using a cross-sectional design, we examined these associations in 1446 Chinese children aged 8–11 years. Residential greenspace and built-up exposure were quantified within 300-m residential buffers using land-cover data. EF was assessed using tasks indexing working memory (span and updating), response inhibition, conflict inhibition, and cognitive flexibility. Linear mixed-effects models and complementary network analyses, both accounting for measured covariates, were used to characterize exposure-EF associations. Greenspace exposure showed the clearest and most consistent positive associations with working memory measures and was also associated with better cognitive flexibility; associations with inhibition were less consistent. Built-up exposure showed a more limited pattern of inverse associations, concentrated primarily in working memory. Across both analytical approaches, working memory emerged as the EF component most consistently associated with residential environmental exposure. This cross-method convergence highlights the importance of considering domain-specific patterns in environment-cognition associations and suggests that child-focused neighborhood planning may benefit from considering greenspace and built-up exposure jointly.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":48392,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Science","volume":"29 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2026-09-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149041498","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Emergence of Goal-Directed Behaviors via Active Inference With Self-Prior","authors":"Dongmin Kim,&nbsp;Hoshinori Kanazawa,&nbsp;Naoto Yoshida,&nbsp;Yasuo Kuniyoshi","doi":"10.1111/desc.70286","DOIUrl":"10.1111/desc.70286","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 \u0000 <section>\u0000 \u0000 <p>Infants often exhibit goal-directed behaviors, such as reaching for a sensory stimulus, even when no external reward criterion is provided. These intrinsically motivated behaviors facilitate spontaneous exploration and learning of the body and environment during early developmental stages. Although computational modeling can offer insight into the mechanisms underlying such behaviors, many existing studies on intrinsic motivation focus primarily on how exploration contributes to acquiring external rewards. In this paper, we propose a novel density model for an agent's own multimodal sensory experiences, called the “self-prior,” and investigate whether it can autonomously induce goal-directed behavior. Integrated within an active inference framework based on the free energy principle, the self-prior generates behavioral references purely from an intrinsic process that minimizes mismatches between average past sensory experiences and current observations. This mechanism is also analogous to the acquisition and utilization of a body schema through continuous interaction with the environment. We examine this approach in a simulated environment and confirm that the agent spontaneously reaches toward a tactile stimulus. Our study implements intrinsically motivated behavior shaped by the agent's own sensory experiences, demonstrating the spontaneous emergence of intentional behavior during early development.</p>\u0000 </section>\u0000 \u0000 <section>\u0000 \u0000 <h3> Summary</h3>\u0000 \u0000 <div>\u0000 <ul>\u0000 \u0000 <li>\u0000 <p>Suggests a computational model for early intentional behavior, integrating body-schema formation and goal-directed actions under the free energy principle.</p>\u0000 </li>\u0000 \u0000 <li>\u0000 <p>Introduces a self-prior as an internal density model that drives the emergence of goal-directed behaviors without external rewards.</p>\u0000 </li>\u0000 \u0000 <li>\u0000 <p>Demonstrates spontaneous reaching for a sticker by minimizing mismatches between observed multimodal sensory inputs and the empirically acquired self-prior.</p>\u0000 </li>\u0000 </ul>\u0000 </div>\u0000 </section>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":48392,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Science","volume":"29 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2026-09-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/desc.70286","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149041518","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"ManyBabies 3: A Multi-Lab Study of Infant Algebraic Rule Learning","authors":"Ingmar Visser,&nbsp;Andreea Geambasu,&nbsp;George Kachergis,&nbsp;Cátia M. Oliveira,&nbsp;Joscelin Rocha-Hidalgo,&nbsp;Martin Zettersten,&nbsp;Teruni Ahamat,&nbsp;Nicolás Alessandroni,&nbsp;Nadja Althaus,&nbsp;Sudha Arunachalam,&nbsp;Suzanne Aussems,&nbsp;Emma L Axelsson,&nbsp;Zeynep Aydin,&nbsp;Heidi A. Baumgartner,&nbsp;Christina Bergmann,&nbsp;Roberta Bettoni,&nbsp;Alexis K. Black,&nbsp;Hermann Bulf,&nbsp;Krista Byers-Heinlein,&nbsp;Chiara Capparini,&nbsp;Lily Carroll,&nbsp;Alexandra Carstensen,&nbsp;Rebekka Cebulla,&nbsp;Xiaoyun Chen,&nbsp;Kateřina Chládková,&nbsp;Benedetta Colavolpe,&nbsp;Rodica R Constantine,&nbsp;Elísabet Eir Cortes,&nbsp;Frances L. Doyle,&nbsp;Anna Exner,&nbsp;Samuel H Forbes,&nbsp;Laura Franchin,&nbsp;Alessandra Geraci,&nbsp;Judit Gervain,&nbsp;Nayeli Gonzalez-Gomez,&nbsp;Silje Hagelund,&nbsp;Erin E Hannon,&nbsp;Naomi Havron,&nbsp;Sagi Jaffe-Dax,&nbsp;Scott P Johnson,&nbsp;Wiktoria Jędryczka,&nbsp;Natalia Kartushina,&nbsp;Melissa Kline Struhl,&nbsp;Ada Koleini,&nbsp;Abhinav Kona,&nbsp;Shannon P Kong,&nbsp;Jessica E Kosie,&nbsp;Monika Kuc̆erová,&nbsp;Katerina Cook,&nbsp;Jared Wayne Leslie,&nbsp;Casey Lew-Williams,&nbsp;Scarlet Wan Yee Li,&nbsp;Romi Livne,&nbsp;Ellen Marklund,&nbsp;Julien Mayor,&nbsp;Michal Misiak,&nbsp;David Moreau,&nbsp;Jutta L. Mueller,&nbsp;Amber Muhinyi,&nbsp;Alyssa A Quinn,&nbsp;Maartje E. J. Raijmakers,&nbsp;Audun Rosslund,&nbsp;Iris-Corinna Schwarz,&nbsp;Jeanne L Shinskey,&nbsp;Mohinish Shukla,&nbsp;Sylvain Sirois,&nbsp;Piotr Sorokowski,&nbsp;Basma Sowan,&nbsp;Tibor Tauzin,&nbsp;Angeline Sin Mei Tsui,&nbsp;Martina Turconi,&nbsp;Rebeca C Urizar,&nbsp;Lisa Wagner,&nbsp;Stephanie Wermelinger,&nbsp;Gert Westermann,&nbsp;Ivonne Weyers,&nbsp;Luiza S. B. Yuan,&nbsp;Martina S. Zaharieva,&nbsp;Tania S. Zamuner,&nbsp;Barbara Zapiór,&nbsp;Simone Zasso,&nbsp;J. Grace Zhou,&nbsp;Melanie Soderstrom,&nbsp;Clara C. Levelt","doi":"10.1111/desc.70259","DOIUrl":"10.1111/desc.70259","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The ability to learn and apply rules lies at the heart of cognition. In a seminal study, Marcus et al. (1999) reported that 7-month-old infants learned abstract rules over syllable sequences and were able to generalize those rules to novel syllable sequences. Dozens of studies have since replicated that finding and extended it using different rules, modalities, stimuli, participants (human adults and non-human animals) and experimental procedures. Yet questions remain about the generalizability of the core findings in Marcus et al., and sources of variation across these findings. In the current study, we address this issue by testing 839 infants (650 after exclusions) of a wide age range (5;0–12;0 months) in a multi-laboratory (30 laboratories, [31 samples]) conceptual replication of the Marcus et al. study. This study and the analysis plan were submitted as a registered report. A mixed-model analysis of the looking times at consistent versus inconsistent test trials indicated no significant effect. The current study therefore finds no evidence for rule-learning; to the contrary, a Bayesian analysis of the data indicated strong evidence for a null effect. This was similarly the case for the moderating factors that were part of the design: mono- versus multilingualism, age, and experimental paradigm; none of these factors showed significant effects. Robustness analyses indicated that the results were not different in the case of different choices in the (pre-)processing of the data. A follow-up analysis for single labs indicated that there was no evidence of rule-learning in 30 of the 31 contributed samples. The current finding raises fundamental issues about rule-learning that are presented in the Discussion section.</p>","PeriodicalId":48392,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Science","volume":"29 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2026-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13578860/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148978509","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}