Cognitive Development最新文献

{"title":"A longitudinal study of predictive relations between imitation and cognitive abilities in 12-, 18-, and 24-month-olds","authors":"Maurits Adam,&nbsp;Franziska Sieber,&nbsp;Norbert Zmyj","doi":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101794","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101794","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Imitation is a fundamental mechanism of cultural learning, but its underlying cognitive mechanisms remain highly debated. For example, nativist accounts argue that imitation is based on domain-specific learning mechanisms, but empiricist accounts argue that it is based on domain-general learning mechanisms. The present longitudinal study investigated the interplay between imitation and general cognitive abilities across the second year of life. A sample of 143 German children was tested at 12, 18, and 24 months of age. Imitation was measured using the Frankfurt Imitation Test, and cognitive development was measured using the Cognitive Scale of the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development III. Cross-lagged panel modeling was employed to examine bidirectional associations between imitation behavior and cognitive abilities. Results indicated moderate stability in cognitive abilities across measurements, whereas imitation behavior showed no temporal stability. Critically, cognitive abilities at 18 months significantly predicted imitation at 24 months, but no reverse effects were found. Overall, the findings provide limited and non-systematic support for a predictive relationship between domain-general cognitive abilities and imitation. Although the observed predictive effect is consistent with empiricist accounts emphasizing general learning mechanisms, the lack of significant associations across measurement time points suggests that imitation may not be linked solely to general cognitive development. These results highlight the importance of considering both domain-general and domain-specific contributions to imitation and underscore the need for future research to systematically control for cognitive developmental status when investigating early social-cognitive abilities.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51422,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Development","volume":"80 ","pages":"Article 101794"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2026-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149200635","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"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 effects of single vs multiple perspectives in film on children’s open-mindedness","authors":"Francesca Carbone,&nbsp;Angela Nyhout,&nbsp;Stacie Friend,&nbsp;Murray Smith,&nbsp;Heather J. Ferguson","doi":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101781","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101781","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Aesthetic Cognitivism claims that art can foster open-mindedness—an important epistemic virtue and educational goal. However, empirical studies testing this claim are rare, especially with film, a medium popular among children. The current study examined whether narrative films depicting multiple perspectives enhance open-mindedness in children aged 8–12 years old (<em>N</em> = 150), a period marked by advances in narrative understanding and perspective-taking. We compared three conditions: a multiple-perspective clip from <em>Hoodwinked</em>, a single-perspective version of the same film, and a no-film control. Open-mindedness was assessed via four established behavioural measures: creativity, imaginability, openness to new evidence, and cognitive flexibility. Three physiological indices (eye movement, heart rate, electrodermal activity) were also measured during viewing. None of the behavioural measures showed improvement in the film conditions versus no-film, and multiple perspectives did not yield benefits over a single perspective. However, electrodermal activity was higher in the multiple-perspective condition than the single perspective condition, suggesting greater arousal, though without corresponding behavioural gains. Unexpectedly, creativity scores were lower in both film conditions relative to the control, indicating a potential short-term depleting effect of watching the film on creativity. These results do not support the claim that film, or the presentation of multiple perspectives, promotes open-mindedness in children.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51422,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Development","volume":"80 ","pages":"Article 101781"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2026-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149200633","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Children’s multimodal feedback practices across cultures: A lens on social-cognitive development","authors":"Anastasia Bauer,&nbsp;Sonja Gipper,&nbsp;Alice Mitchell,&nbsp;Birgit Träuble,&nbsp;Pamela Perniss,&nbsp;Birgit Hellwig","doi":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101761","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101761","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Adult recipients are understood to be active participants in conversation who co-construct talk using feedback signals. However, the ways in which children produce feedback to signal their active participation in interaction remain underexplored in developmental pragmatics. To address this gap, this paper presents an initial exploration of children’s use of multimodal feedback signals based on video corpora recorded in naturalistic contexts across four linguistically and culturally diverse settings: Datooga (Tanzania), Qaqet (Papua New Guinea), Bolivian Amazonian Spanish (Bolivia), and American English (USA). This study provides exploratory evidence of young children’s feedback behavior within social interactions across cultures, and suggests differences in comparison to adults’ multimodal feedback behaviors. Our findings reveal that young children (aged 2–6 years) produce less feedback than adults, suggesting a potentially higher tolerance for non-progressivity and breakdowns in interaction. They appear to make fewer explicit attempts to signal shared understanding or to indicate that they are monitoring their interlocutor’s speech. Nonetheless, children across our sample do provide feedback: they produce some non-repair feedback and employ repair initiators. Our observations indicate that young children use multimodal practices in the production of feedback signals significantly less often than adults. Given the overall research gap in the developmental literature, we provide tentative explanations for the observed patterns and their implications for cognitive development. Integrating insights from developmental psychology, we propose, among other things, that children’s use of non-repair feedback relates to the development of Theory of Mind, as these practices require a nuanced understanding of others’ mental states. On the other hand, the limited use of embodied practices in children’s feedback production hints at the progressive development of multimodal languaging in children. These findings contribute to our understanding of cognitive development and language acquisition, shedding light on the development of multimodal interactional mechanisms in childhood.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51422,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Development","volume":"80 ","pages":"Article 101761"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2026-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149200634","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Picture-and-text content reminders enhance prospective memory performance in 9-year-old children","authors":"Rongqian Li,&nbsp;Chenyu Gao,&nbsp;Jie Li,&nbsp;Mengqi Wu,&nbsp;Jiaqun Gan,&nbsp;Yunfei Guo","doi":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101785","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101785","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Reminders are an effective form of cognitive support for improving prospective memory, particularly in children whose executive functions are still developing. Because children may have fewer opportunities to use electronic devices for setting reminders, they more often rely on simple reminders, such as sticky notes with pictures and text. Using a 2 × 2 experimental design with reminder condition and ongoing-task difficulty as factors, this study included 112 school-age children around 9 years old in the final analysis and adopted a classic dual-task paradigm based on a color-matching task to examine the effects of picture-and-text reminders on children’s prospective memory. The results showed a significant main effect of picture-and-text reminders on prospective memory performance, whereas the interaction between reminder condition and ongoing-task difficulty was not statistically significant. Multinomial processing tree modeling further indicated that both the prospective and the retrospective components were higher in the reminder condition than in the control condition. In addition, children in the reminder condition responded more slowly on the ongoing task than those in the control condition. These findings suggest that external picture-and-text reminders may improve prospective memory while altering attentional or cognitive-resource allocation during task performance. Although the present study has design limitations and the evidence remains indirect, these findings reveal the effects of picture-and-text reminders on prospective memory in children around 9 years old and offer a potential strategy for supporting children’s memory in real-world settings.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51422,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Development","volume":"80 ","pages":"Article 101785"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2026-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149155075","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Understanding learner engagement in AI-mediated language learning: Growth mindset, resilience, self-efficacy, and AI-use behavior profiles","authors":"Xiaosheng Zhou,&nbsp;Ying Soon Goh","doi":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101786","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101786","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study examined the relationships among growth mindset, resilience, self-efficacy, and learner engagement in AI-mediated language learning, while exploring variation in learners’ reported AI-use behaviors and experiences of AI-generated feedback. Drawing on survey data from 625 Malaysian undergraduates and follow-up interviews with 24 participants, the study employed structural equation modeling, latent profile analysis, and reflexive thematic analysis. The findings indicated positive associations of growth mindset and resilience with self-efficacy and learner engagement. Self-efficacy was positively associated with learner engagement and statistically mediated the associations of growth mindset and resilience with engagement. Latent profile analysis identified three patterns of reported AI-use behavior: Low AI-Use Behavior, Moderate AI-Use Behavior, and High AI-Use Behavior, based on AI-use frequency, revision cycles, revision depth, and feedback types used. Multigroup analyses indicated broadly comparable motivational relationships among Chinese and English language learners, although the growth mindset–engagement association was stronger among Chinese learners, while the resilience–self-efficacy association was stronger among English learners. The qualitative findings illustrated how participants representing the three profiles described interpreting, evaluating, and incorporating AI-generated feedback during language-learning activities. Participants’ accounts also reflected variation in how they assessed feedback, applied it in subsequent learning activities, and perceived the demands of AI-supported learning. These accounts provide contextual insight into learners’ experiences of AI-generated feedback without suggesting that profile membership determines such experiences. Overall, the findings indicate that self-efficacy was positively associated with engagement in the AI-mediated learning context examined, alongside heterogeneity in learners’ reported AI-use behaviors and experiences with AI-generated feedback.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51422,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Development","volume":"80 ","pages":"Article 101786"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2026-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149154980","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Strengths and weaknesses: Early word learning skills and profiles of vocabulary development","authors":"Laia Fibla,&nbsp;John P. Spencer,&nbsp;Larissa K. Samuelson","doi":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101789","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101789","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Early vocabulary development predicts later cognitive functioning and school success. We sought to examine how processing differences across several skills that contribute to early word learning relate to variability in children’s vocabulary development. Building on recent direct measures of early vocabulary and language learning processes, we collected data from 166 children between 15- to 27-months in a single eyetracking task measuring lexical speed of processing, comprehension, novelty bias, word mapping and new word retention. We found clear differences in responding across the different measures and robust patterns of developmental change. Children’s comprehension grew over development, and across word classes they showed distinct looking patterns, reflecting differences in word type processing and more efficient noun recognition compared to adjectives and verbs. Speed of processing and online comprehension showed strong relationships with concurrent vocabulary, similar to previous reports. Children also showed improvement in referent selection over development, but as found in previous literature, they did not show evidence of retaining new word-object mappings formed on earlier trials of the task. Data driven classification found two robust clusters of children. One group showed faster speed of lexical processing, better comprehension and were better at linking new nouns to novel objects. Numerically, this group had the highest parent-reported concurrent productive vocabulary scores. Data are discussed in relation to similar work in the literature, what concurrent measurement of multiple word learning processes reveals about the system of multiple processes supporting early vocabulary development, and children’s individual trajectories of word learning.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51422,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Development","volume":"80 ","pages":"Article 101789"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2026-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149154981","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Can children generalise newly acquired object categories based on visual and haptic features?","authors":"Eimear M. McKenna,&nbsp;Rebecca, J. Hirst,&nbsp;Fiona N. Newell","doi":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101791","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101791","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Although children constantly interact with the objects in their environment using vision and touch, our understanding of how these senses contribute to category formation is relatively poor. Children may find the complementary information about the relevant object features across vision and touch helpful for categorisation. Alternatively, cross-sensory information may increase the search space within which the relevant category features are encoded. The aim of the current experiment was to investigate children’s ability to learn and generalise object categories based on unimodal or bimodal information. Different groups of children aged from 4 to 13 years (<em>N</em> = 246) first learned to categorise novel objects using either vision, haptics or both modalities. Category learning was worst in bimodal conditions in younger children only, but modality had no effect on learning in older children. We then assessed categorisation performance to learned objects and generalisation to novel exemplars defined by a change of object features selected from either within or across categories. Relative to categorisation, generalisation was unaffected by within-category feature changes but reduced by cross-category feature changes. Our results suggest that children’s ability to generalise object categories is best for visual information. Moreover, we found no specific benefit for multisensory information on category learning or generalisation at any age. These findings provide insights into children’s ability to selectively attend and encode object features and suggest an independent influence of vision and touch in the formation of object categories during childhood.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51422,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Development","volume":"80 ","pages":"Article 101791"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2026-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149200262","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"From action perception to imitation: Children and adults use action features to determine whether an observed action is (un)necessary","authors":"Hanna Schleihauf,&nbsp;Stefanie Hoehl,&nbsp;Christine Michel,&nbsp;Souromi Bhowmick,&nbsp;Roman Stengelin,&nbsp;Maleen Thiele","doi":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101793","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101793","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Children and adults often learn through imitation, sometimes even reproducing actions that are unnecessary for achieving an instrumental goal. This phenomenon, known as over-imitation, can reflect social (affiliative or normative) motives but also mistaken causal beliefs. Only the former requires recognition that an action is unnecessary for achieving the instrumental goal. To discern between social and causal motives for over-imitation, it is therefore important to understand how individuals determine whether an action is functionally necessary or unnecessary. In two eye-tracking studies, we examined how urban German children (n = 48) and adults (n = 47) use action features to judge whether an action is causally necessary or unnecessary for achieving a goal. We found that both age groups struggled to recognize pseudoinstrumental actions—unnecessary actions that involve physical contact with the object and thus seem causally plausible at first sight—as unnecessary, relative to ritualistic actions, which involve no such contact. Children copied pseudo-instrumental actions more frequently than adults, suggesting that adults may invest more cognitive effort into evaluating the causal relevance of an action. With increasing age, over-imitation thus appears to become more selective and deliberate.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51422,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Development","volume":"80 ","pages":"Article 101793"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2026-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149200632","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Toward understanding children’s conceptualization of category ambiguity in foods","authors":"Simone P. Nguyen","doi":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101787","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101787","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Children’s ability to mentally represent the world through concepts and categories is a core cognitive development achievement. Young children can classify foods using taxonomic, script, thematic, and evaluative categories. However, emerging food innovations with ambiguous category membership increasingly complicate these boundaries (e.g., plant-based meat analogs, dairy alternatives, hybrid foods, and veggie-based carbohydrate substitutes), as their properties, often shaped by how they are engineered, named, and marketed, fit imperfectly with children's existing categorization systems. Despite the increasing prevalence of emerging food innovations, little is known about how children conceptualize and categorize these foods. This paper introduces the construct of category ambiguity, distinguishing this construct from related ones such as graded typicality, epistemic uncertainty, and cross-classification, and situates it within the broader categorization literature. Category conflict of this kind is not unique to food, but novel food innovations make this general problem unusually visible because these products are engineered to decouple properties that ordinarily converge to determine category membership. The paper proposes a tentative framework identifying three possible responses (category extension, boundary revision, and maintaining competing representations), and considers how language and labeling, essentialist and teleological reasoning, and executive function may jointly influence which response a child exhibits across development. Future research directions generated by the framework address labeling, cultural variation, and the link between conceptual representation and food acceptance, with implications for supporting openness to new foods and sustainable eating.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51422,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Development","volume":"80 ","pages":"Article 101787"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2026-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149154979","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Developmental progression in object structure perspective taking across the primary school years: From egocentric views to structural insight","authors":"Uri Alon","doi":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101790","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101790","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Object-structure perspective taking (OSPT) refers to the ability to visualize how a three-dimensional object appears from a different viewpoint and is considered an important spatial skill in geometry learning and STEM-related domains. However, little is known about how OSPT develops across childhood or how specific task characteristics shape performance. This study examined OSPT development in 1064 children from Grades 1–6 attending diverse schools in northern Israel. Children completed a 31-item computer-based assessment in which they selected the expected view of a 3D object from an alternative viewpoint. Items varied by object type (geometric or real-world), by view format within the real-world objects (full detail or contour), and by the angular disparity between the child's and the observer's viewpoints. Generalized linear mixed models assessed developmental trends and item-level performance. OSPT improved steadily from Grade 1 to Grade 6, interrupted by a temporary plateau between Grades 4 and 5 that was specific to object type: real-world full-detail items continued to improve across this interval, whereas geometric items, already near ceiling, and real-world contour items did not. Geometric items were consistently easiest and real-world contour items hardest, with real-world full-detail items in between, and these object-type differences were most pronounced at larger angular disparities. Even the most challenging items showed developmental gains by Grade 6. These findings delineate a developmental trajectory for OSPT during the primary school years and show how object characteristics and viewpoint disparity contribute to task difficulty, with implications for geometry instruction and developmentally appropriate spatial activities.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51422,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Development","volume":"80 ","pages":"Article 101790"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2026-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149154983","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}