{"title":"Child Vocabulary and Developmental Growth in Executive Functions During Toddlerhood","authors":"Frédéric Thériault-Couture, Célia Matte-Gagné, Annie Bernier","doi":"10.1111/desc.70010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.70010","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Executive functions (EFs) emerge in the first years of life and are essential for many areas of child development. However, intraindividual developmental trajectories of EF during toddlerhood and their associations with ongoing development of language skills remain poorly understood. The present three-wave study examined these trajectories and their associations with language skills. Child EF and vocabulary were assessed around 13, 19, and 28 months of age in a sample of 145 toddlers (51% boys) from mostly White families. At each time point, mothers reported on child receptive and expressive vocabulary, and EF were assessed with three behavioral tasks targeting inhibitory control, cognitive flexibility, and working memory. Multilevel growth models revealed that toddlerhood is a period of significant developmental growth in child inhibitory control, cognitive flexibility, and working memory. The findings also provide evidence for a sustained relation between toddlers’ language skills and their ongoing acquisition of inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility. This study offers novel insight into intraindividual developmental changes in EF during toddlerhood and the role of language in these meaningful, though neglected, changes.</p>","PeriodicalId":48392,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Science","volume":"28 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-03-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/desc.70010","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143629790","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}
Claire Essex, Rachael Bedford, Teodora Gliga, Tim J. Smith
{"title":"Toddlers Viewing Fantastical Cartoons: Evidence of an Immediate Reduction in Endogenous Control Without an Increase in Stimulus-Driven Exogenous Control","authors":"Claire Essex, Rachael Bedford, Teodora Gliga, Tim J. Smith","doi":"10.1111/desc.70008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.70008","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Empirical studies have shown immediate detrimental effects of TV viewing on children's executive functions (EFs). Existing theories of TV viewing have proposed that such depletion could occur due to fantastical cartoons triggering an attention bias towards salient features of the stimuli (e.g., stimulus-driven exogenous attention). However, a co-occurrence of salient visual features known to drive attention exogenously in fantastical cartoons means it is unclear which aspect of the content is problematic. In the present study, we matched clips on visual saliency to isolate and test the short-term impact of fantastical content. Specifically, we tested (1) performance on an inhibitory control (IC) task (a gaze-contingent anti-saccade task) as a measure of EF depletion, whilst 36 toddlers (18 months) viewed cartoons with and without fantastical events (7-min viewing duration), and (2) whether differences in IC are associated with increased stimulus-driven exogenous attention. Results confirmed an immediate detrimental effect of fantastical cartoons on toddlers’ endogenous control (indexed by anti-saccade behaviours), with toddlers less able to inhibit looks to a distractor to make anticipatory looks to a target. However, fixation durations (FDs) during cartoon viewing and speed of orienting to a distractor on the anti-saccade task did not differ between the two viewing conditions, suggesting no effects on exogenously driven attention. These results point to a detrimental impact of fantastical cartoons on endogenous control mechanisms, which may have arisen from cognitive processing difficulties.</p>","PeriodicalId":48392,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Science","volume":"28 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-03-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/desc.70008","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143632810","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":"When Language Background Does Not Matter: Both Mono- and Bilingual Children Use Mutual Exclusivity and Pragmatic Context to Learn Novel Words","authors":"Natalie Bleijlevens, Anna-Lena Ciesla, Tanya Behne","doi":"10.1111/desc.13618","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.13618","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Do mono- and bilingual children differ in the way they learn novel words in ambiguous settings? Listeners may resolve referential ambiguity by assuming that novel words refer to unknown, rather than known, objects–a response known as the <i>mutual exclusivity effect</i>. Past research suggested that mono- and bilinguals differ with regard to this disambiguation strategy, perhaps because, across languages, bilinguals’ experience contradicts one-to-one mappings of label and referent. Another line of research suggested a bilingual advantage in resolving referential ambiguity, based on bilinguals’ advanced pragmatic skills. Here, we examine both these claims in a preregistered study with comparable samples of mono- and bilingual 3-year-olds (<i>n</i> = 74) and adults (<i>n</i> = 86). We tested referent disambiguation and retention in two tasks: In the Mutual-Exclusivity task, a speaker used a novel label in the presence of a known and an unknown object. In the Pragmatic task, she used another novel label in the presence of two unknown objects and participants could infer from the pragmatic context that the speaker referred to the object that was new in their discourse. Mono- and bilinguals were equally successful in inferring the correct label-referent links in both tasks and retained them after a delay. These findings indicate that children with different language backgrounds can develop the same strategies and pragmatic skills to learn novel words. Children can use their lexical knowledge and socio-cognitive skills to infer the meanings of novel words, irrespective of whether they are acquiring one or more languages.</p>","PeriodicalId":48392,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Science","volume":"28 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/desc.13618","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143595262","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":"Influence of Child-Level Factors and Lexical Characteristics on Vocabulary Knowledge of Children With Cochlear Implants and Hearing Aids","authors":"Emily Lund, Krystal L. Werfel","doi":"10.1111/desc.70007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.70007","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Recent studies indicate children who are deaf and hard of hearing who use cochlear implants or hearing aids know fewer spoken words than their peers with typical hearing, and often those vocabularies differ in composition. To date, however, the interaction of a child's auditory profile with the lexical characteristics of words he or she knows has been minimally explored. The purpose of the present study is to evaluate how audiological history, phonological memory, and overall vocabulary knowledge interact with growth in types of spoken words known by children who are deaf and hard of hearing compared to children with typical hearing. Children with cochlear implants (<i>n</i> = 36) and hearing aids (<i>n</i> = 39) were compared to children with typical hearing (<i>n</i> = 47) at ages 4 and 6. Children participated in measures of phonological memory and vocabulary knowledge, inclusive of an experimental measure with words of varying phonotactic probability and neighborhood density. Results indicate that children with hearing aids and with cochlear implants tend to know fewer words across all lexical conditions than children with typical hearing. For children with cochlear implants, overall vocabulary knowledge was the best predictor of a mis-matched probability and density condition, whereas it was the best predictor of matched condition for children with hearing aids. Children with cochlear implants and children with hearing aids, then, appear to have different underlying skills that interact with the lexical characteristics of words to support vocabulary growth.</p>","PeriodicalId":48392,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Science","volume":"28 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/desc.70007","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143595182","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":"Pedagogy Does Not Necessarily Constrain Exploration: Investigating Preschoolers’ Information Search During Instructed Exploration","authors":"Rebeka Anna Zsoldos, Ildikó Király","doi":"10.1111/desc.70004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.70004","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Pedagogy is seen as a “double-edged sword”: it efficiently conveys information but may constrain the exploration of the causal structure of objects, suggesting that pedagogy and exploration are mutually exclusive learning processes. However, research on children's active involvement in concept acquisition implies that pedagogical signals could facilitate exploratory behavior, indicating a complementary relationship. To understand the link between them, we designed an object exploration task for preschool-aged children featuring between-subject conditions of pedagogical exploration or pedagogical demonstration. Our findings suggest that if the use of the toy is not demonstrated to children and they are allowed to discover the evidence independently, pedagogical signals do not restrict subsequent exploratory behavior. These results imply that pedagogy and exploration complement each other, with pedagogical signals highlighting the relevant evidence and exploratory behavior enriching knowledge by fostering learning from individual experiences.</p>","PeriodicalId":48392,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Science","volume":"28 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-03-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/desc.70004","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143595052","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":"Correction to “Visualizing the Invisible Tie: Linking Parent–Child Neural Synchrony to Parents’ and Children's Attachment Representations”","authors":"","doi":"10.1111/desc.70003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.70003","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Nguyen, T., Kungl, M. T., Hoehl, S., White, L. O., & Vrtička, P. (2024). “Visualizing the invisible tie: Linking parent–child neural synchrony to parents’ and children's attachment representations.” <i>Developmental Science</i> 27, e13504. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.13504</p><p>There is an error in the data pertaining to the measure of children's attachment representations derived from the Picture Story Stem Battery (PSSB) because PSSB coherence values from 23 children were wrongly assigned to children's IDs. In the new analyses based on the corrected PSSB coherence values, the authors could not replicate the originally reported finding that dyads comprising daughters with secure attachment representations showed higher INS in right temporo-parietal regions—that is, the corrected results no longer revealed significant (interaction) effect, <i>p </i>> 0.091. All other results remained unchanged—that is, the authors confirmed their originally reported findings of no significant associations between children's PSSB coherence, behavioral synchrony, and children's biological sex, <i>p </i>> 0.305. The updated findings require corrections for Section 5.3 in the discussion. Additionally, all affected descriptive statistics and results in the Supplemental Materials have been corrected. Here are the corrections:</p><p>The third point in the Research Highlights is:</p><p>Dyads including daughters with secure attachment representations showed higher INS in right temporo-parietal regions.</p><p>It should have been:</p><p>Attachment representations in children were not associated with INS of parent-child dyads</p><p>The fourth point in the Research Highlights is:</p><p>INS is a <b>promising</b> correlate to probe the neurobiological underpinnings of attachment representations in the context of parent-child interactions, especially within the mutual prediction framework.</p><p>It should have been:</p><p>INS is a <b>potential</b> correlate to probe the neurobiological underpinnings of attachment representations in the context of parent-child interactions, especially within the mutual prediction framework.</p><p>In Section 4.5, the sentence:</p><p>The model outputs showed <b>a</b> significant interaction effect of ROI, children's biological sex, and PSSB coherence, <b>𝛸<sup>2</sup>(3) = 12.58, <i>p</i> = 0.006</b>.</p><p>Should have been:</p><p>The model outputs showed <b>no</b> significant fixed and interaction effects of ROI, children's biological sex, and PSSB coherence, <b><i>p </i>> 0.091</b>.</p><p>In Section 4.6, the sentence:</p><p>However, none of these relations were significant, <b><i>p</i> > 0.803</b>.</p><p>Should have been:</p><p>However, none of these relations were significant, <b><i>p </i>> 0.305</b>.</p><p>Section 5.3 should have been:</p>","PeriodicalId":48392,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Science","volume":"28 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-03-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/desc.70003","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143554249","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":"Do Young Children Use Verbal Disfluency as a Cue to Their Own Confidence?","authors":"Eloise West, Carolyn Baer, Lisa Yu, Darko Odic","doi":"10.1111/desc.13617","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.13617","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Metacognitive reasoning is central to decision-making. For every decision, we can also judge our trust in that decision, or our level of <i>confidence</i>. The mechanisms and representations underlying reasoning about confidence remain debated. We test whether children rely on <i>processing fluency</i> to infer their own confidence: do decisions that come quickly and easily lead to high confidence, while decisions that are slow and effortful result in low confidence? Using children's verbal disfluency—fillers (e.g., “umm,” “uhh”), hedges (e.g., “I think,” “maybe”), and pauses in speech—as an observable index of processing fluency, we assess whether children's reports of confidence are a read-out of their verbal disfluency. Five-to-eight-year-olds answered semantic questions about animals and performed perceptual comparisons, then reported their confidence in their answers in a two-alternative forced-choice confidence judgment task. Verbal disfluency predicted both answer accuracy and children's reports of confidence: children produced more fillers, more hedges, and longer speech onsets during incorrect trials and during low confidence trials. But we also found a dissociation between fluency and confidence. When examining trials where accuracy and confidence diverge (i.e., correct but low confidence or incorrect but high confidence trials), we observe no reliable relationship between confidence and fillers and hedges, and children take <i>longer</i> to begin answering on high confidence trials. We conclude that—in 5–8-year-old-children—fluency is a reliable tracker of <i>accuracy</i> but not confidence, and that fluency is only predictive of metacognitive judgments in children when confidence and accuracy are aligned.</p>","PeriodicalId":48392,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Science","volume":"28 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-03-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/desc.13617","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143554345","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}
Peter A. Bos, Madelon M. E. Riem, Eddie Brummelman
{"title":"The Nature of Love Revisited: How Social Bonds Shape Development","authors":"Peter A. Bos, Madelon M. E. Riem, Eddie Brummelman","doi":"10.1111/desc.70005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.70005","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48392,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Science","volume":"28 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-03-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143554694","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":"Impact of Deafness on the Lateralized Brain Responses to Letters and Digits: A Fast Periodic Visual Stimulation Exploratory Study in Deaf and Hearing Children","authors":"Virginie Crollen, Margot Buyle, Christine Schiltz, Aliette Lochy","doi":"10.1111/desc.70001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.70001","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>Numbers and letters are culturally created symbols that acquire meaning through extensive training, significantly influencing brain function. The distinct hemispheric specialization of cortical regions for these categories has been hypothesized to relate to the co-activated brain networks: the left language regions for letters, and the right intra-parietal sulcus for numbers. However, the potential influence of deafness and sign language on hemispheric specialization for letters and numbers remains unclear. The present study aims to explore this issue by using a FPVS-EEG approach with an oddball paradigm. Deaf and hearing children aged 8–13 were exposed to rapid streams of visual stimuli (6 Hz), with a deviant category introduced periodically (every 5 items; at 1.2 Hz) and eliciting a neural response in the frequency domain if discriminated from the base category. Here, digits are served as base stimuli and letters as oddball stimuli, and vice-versa. Our results suggest disparities in hemispheric lateralization for letters between deaf and hearing children, while neural responses to digits did not significantly vary between the two groups. Both groups exhibited right-lateralized responses to digits, which were stronger compared to responses to letters. Importantly, in deaf children, the neural response to letters was stronger in the right hemisphere, whereas hearing children displayed a bilateral response with a nonsignificant trend toward left lateralization. The important implications of these exploratory results, suggesting an early impact of sensory deprivation and/or sign language on the organization of the brain, are discussed.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":48392,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Science","volume":"28 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-03-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143533284","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":"Perceptual Novelty Drives Early Exploration in a Bottom-Up Manner","authors":"Mengcun Gao, Vladimir M. Sloutsky","doi":"10.1111/desc.70002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.70002","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Children are more likely than adults to explore new options, but is this due to a top-down epistemic-uncertainty-driven process or a bottom-up novelty-driven process? Given immature cognitive control, children may choose a new option because they are more susceptible to the automatic attraction of perceptual novelty and have difficulty disengaging from it. This hypothesis is difficult to test because perceptual novelty is intertwined with epistemic uncertainty. To address this problem, we designed a new n-armed bandit task to fully decouple novelty and epistemic uncertainty. By having adults and 4- to 6-year-olds perform the task, we found that perceptual novelty predominated 4-year-olds’ (but not adults’ or older children's) decisions even when it had no epistemic uncertainty and had the lowest reward value. Additionally, 4-year-olds showed such a novelty preference only when the option's novelty was directly observable, but not when it could only be anticipated, providing new evidence that perceptual novelty alone can drive elevated exploration in early development in a bottom-up manner.</p>","PeriodicalId":48392,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Science","volume":"28 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-03-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/desc.70002","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143533285","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}