Cognitive Development最新文献

{"title":"Inferences are more than skin deep: Behavior outweighs appearance in 4- and 5-year-olds’ competence and trust judgments","authors":"Carolyn M. Palmquist","doi":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101695","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101695","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Children must weigh many different pieces of information when making inferences about the people around them. The current studies were designed to explore how children weigh others’ behaviors and appearance when determining their potential competence (i.e., smart/not smart) and trustworthiness (e.g., nice/not nice). In Study 1, 4- and 5-year-olds were presented with 16 computer-generated characters: 8 whose faces were designed to appear competent or incompetent and 8 whose faces were designed to appear trustworthy or untrustworthy (Todorov et al., 2013). The characters whose faces appeared more or less trustworthy then engaged in a trustworthy or untrustworthy behavior (e.g., sharing equally or not) and the characters whose faces appeared more or less competent engaged in a competent or incompetent behavior (e.g., knowing the function of a familiar object or not). Finally, children were asked to make inferences about the characters’ future trustworthiness or competence. Study 2 highlighted the characters’ appearance by using the same paradigm, but asking a different group of 4- and 5-year-olds to make inferences about the characters twice: once after only seeing their appearance, and again after seeing their behavior. Across both studies, children primarily relied on the characters’ behaviors to make their inferences, but the strength of behavior varied by inference type. Therefore, when both cues are available, behavior, not appearance, tends to drive children’s inferences about others, but children’s epistemic judgments may be more conservative than their social judgments.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51422,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Development","volume":"78 ","pages":"Article 101695"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2026-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147385653","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":"Mothers’ and fathers’ multimodal behaviors scaffold toddlers’ spatial behaviors","authors":"Sarah V. Riley ,&nbsp;Kasey C. Soska ,&nbsp;Melissa Libertus ,&nbsp;Natasha J. Cabrera ,&nbsp;Catherine S. Tamis LeMonda","doi":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101704","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101704","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Caregiver multimodal input, particularly the combination of speech and gesture, elicits child attention and supports learning across domains. Multimodal input may be especially important for communicating the meaning of abstract spatial words (e.g., words for shapes, such as “circle,” and spatial locations, such as “under”) to novice learners. However, gaps remain on the role of multimodal input during toddlerhood, a time when children are newly acquiring words for spatial concepts. We videorecorded 58 two-to three-year-olds and their mothers and fathers during play with a magnet board and a shape sorter. Time-locked behavioral annotations and speech transcriptions identified parent and toddler manual gestures, toddler spatial actions (i.e., placement or repositioning of a shape), and parent and toddler <em>math talk</em>—which mostly included spatial words but also references to number and order. From annotations, automated scripts identified parents’ multimodal input (i.e., gestures and math words that co-occurred within a 2-s window), and specified parent-to-toddler and toddler-to-parent behavior sequences. Mothers and fathers most frequently displayed unimodal verbal math talk, but they were three times as likely to coordinate their gestures with math words than to produce isolated gestures. Most centrally, toddlers’ spatial actions, gestures, and math talk most consistently followed parents’ multimodal input relative to one or both forms of parents' unimodal input. Specifically, toddlers’ spatial actions were more likely to follow parents’ multimodal input than to follow parents’ unimodal math talk or unimodal gestures; toddlers’ gestures were more likely to follow parents’ multimodal input than to follow parents’ unimodal math talk; and toddlers’ math talk was more likely to follow parents’ multimodal input than to follow parents’ unimodal gestures. Reciprocally, parents consistently followed toddlers’ gestures with multimodal input. Findings spotlight the value of characterizing moment-to-moment coordination between parents’ and toddlers’ behaviors at a time when children’s spatial cognition is growing.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51422,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Development","volume":"78 ","pages":"Article 101704"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2026-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147702798","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":"6- to 8-month-old infants’ understanding of goal-directed actions is unaffected by a mild psychosocial stressor","authors":"Sarah Witt ,&nbsp;Anna Exner ,&nbsp;Sabine Seehagen ,&nbsp;Norbert Zmyj","doi":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101708","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101708","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Mild stress is present in infants’ everyday life, but its effect on their cognition is largely unexplored experimentally. The present pre-registered study tested whether stress leads to a shift from a goal-directed to a movement-based interpretation of others’ actions. Eighty-eight infants aged 6–8 months were tested in either a stress or a control condition. Pre- and post-stress levels were assessed via parental rating and salivary cortisol. In a subsequent visual habituation paradigm, infants watched videos of a human hand repeatedly grasping one of two objects. At test, the positions of the objects were reversed and the hand alternately grasped each object. Parental ratings, but not salivary cortisol concentrations indicated a higher stress level in the stress condition compared to the control condition following the manipulation procedure. No statistically significant differences in infants’ looking behavior at test as a function of condition (stress vs. control) were found. Across conditions, infants looked longer to the test trials in which the hand grasped the new object using the old grasping path, indicating that they had habituated to the goal of the action. Additionally, infants in the stress condition tended to look longer at habituation trials than non-stressed infants. These results suggest that acute stress does not influence infants’ interpretation of others’ actions as goal-directed. However, the slower habituation in stressed infants may indicate that identifying the action target was more difficult for them.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51422,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Development","volume":"78 ","pages":"Article 101708"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2026-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147797453","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":"When intention matters less: Theory of mind and moral reasoning in institutionalized adolescents","authors":"Emilia Alexandra Pascal,&nbsp;Andrei Corneliu Holman","doi":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101710","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101710","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Growing up in state care may influence impact socio-cognitive development in ways that shape moral judgments. Our study examined Theory of Mind (ToM) and moral judgments in 107 adolescents, 66 girls and 41 boys, (<em>M</em>_<em>age</em> = 15 years, 8 months, <em>SD</em> = 2.64), including 52 adolescents in state care (ASC) and 55 living with their biological family (i.e., adolescents in family care; AFC). They completed four ToM tasks, evaluated a set of intentional and unintentional harm scenarios, and a self-beneficial rule-breaking act, i.e., theft. Results showed that, compared to AFC, ASC scored lower on most ToM tasks, had greater difficulty exculpating accidental harm (i.e., attributed more negative intentions), and judged theft more leniently, i.e., as less immoral and less deserving of punishment. These findings extend Baez et al. (2018) to a Romanian mixed-gender sample showing similar patterns of condemning accidental harm and impaired ToM judgments. Overall, the findings suggest that adolescents reared in state care show a distinctive pattern of moral judgment across different types of transgressions, with greater difficulty exculpating accidental harm and greater leniency toward intentional self-beneficial rule-breaking.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51422,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Development","volume":"78 ","pages":"Article 101710"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2026-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147849734","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":"The Early Deception Survey (EDS): Its psychometric properties in children aged 10–47 months","authors":"Elena Hoicka ,&nbsp;Eloise Prouten ,&nbsp;Danielle Matthews ,&nbsp;Jennifer M. Saul ,&nbsp;Ed Donnellan","doi":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101677","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101677","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We developed the Early Deception Survey (EDS) to create an early deception taxonomy and measure. Study 1, which was exploratory, found <em>N</em> = 130 parents reported children engaged in 16 deception types before 47 months, with the earliest report at 8 months. Deception was frequent, typically produced within 1 day of parents completing the survey, and understood within 1 day. Parents’ deceptions towards children positively correlated with children’s deception understanding; and parents’ deception encouragement positively correlated with children’s deception production and understanding (although most parents did not report encouraging deception). Studies 2 (<em>N</em> = 167) and 3 (<em>N</em> = 382) found the 16-item EDS was unidimensional with good internal reliability for 10- to 47-month-olds. While Study 4 (<em>N</em> = 85) found the EDS was unrelated to deception lab tasks, Study 5 found convergent validity (<em>N</em> = 610), but not predictive (<em>N</em> = 203) validity with the Early Social Cognition Inventory, and good longitudinal stability (<em>N</em> = 203). While parent agreement (<em>N</em> = 28) was strong, parent-Early Years Educator agreement (<em>N</em> = 10) was poor. Furthermore, based on our sample, 25 % of children were predicted to engage in at least one deception type by 10 months, 50 % by 16 months, 75 % by 24 months; and 97.5 % by 38 months. We found only one demographic difference in how parents answered individual items, and found less educated and younger parents reported higher EDS scores.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51422,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Development","volume":"78 ","pages":"Article 101677"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2026-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147385650","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":"One book, two minds: Understanding differences in maternal mental state talk during storytelling across siblings","authors":"Aisling Mulvihill ,&nbsp;Callyn Farrell ,&nbsp;Ellen Sanderson ,&nbsp;Linda Gilmore ,&nbsp;Monica Cuskelly ,&nbsp;Virginia Slaughter","doi":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101703","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101703","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>When calibrated to a child’s developmental readiness, maternal mental state talk (MST) presents a powerful mechanism through which mothers can scaffold their children’s understanding of the mind. This study investigated developmentally sensitive differentiation in maternal MST during dyadic interactions across two siblings aged 2.5–8years. Using a within-family design, mothers were observed engaging separately with each child using a wordless picture book, allowing for direct comparison of maternal talk across siblings. Mothers demonstrated less verbosity, proportionally fewer perception terms and proportionally more cognition terms during interactions with older compared to younger siblings. Moreover, maternal adjustment in cognition term use across siblings was associated with developmental differences in theory of mind understanding, but not age, language, or IQ, suggesting maternal linguistic sensitivity to each child’s unique social-cognitive capabilities. This study highlights how maternal MST is dynamically shaped by the real-time needs and capacities of each child in the family system.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51422,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Development","volume":"78 ","pages":"Article 101703"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2026-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147702799","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 prosocial and selfish rule-breaking following an implicit quid pro quo","authors":"Leon Li,&nbsp;Sebastian Grueneisen","doi":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101705","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101705","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Reciprocity is fundamental to cooperation. Yet, it can also motivate unethical behaviors, such as when one diverts resources meant for the common good to pay back a favor. To examine the ontogeny of the unethical influence of reciprocity, this study invited 4- to 7-year-old children (<em>N</em> = 83) to referee and then play a guessing game with performance-based rewards. Prior to the game, a puppet partner gave a gift to either the child referee (Gift condition) or another recipient (No Gift condition). Then, during the game, the partner asked the child referee to help her cheat and obtain undeserved rewards from a pool of common good resources. Unexpectedly, children helped the partner cheat at similarly high rates whether or not they had received a gift from the partner, but receiving a gift did increase children’s selfish cheating for their own benefit. These results extend previous evidence that reciprocity increases prosocial unethical behavior by showing that, at least in some cases, it also increases selfish unethical behavior.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51422,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Development","volume":"78 ","pages":"Article 101705"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2026-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147739821","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":"Why do young children forget to carry out their intentions? Exploring retrospective memory and executive contributions to 3- and 4-year-olds’ prospective memory failures","authors":"Caitlin E.V. Mahy,&nbsp;Madeline K. Maguire,&nbsp;Yesim Yavaslar Dogru,&nbsp;Lydia Lavis,&nbsp;Maria C. Conversano","doi":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101707","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101707","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The current study examined two possible reasons why 3- and 4-year-olds forget to carry out prospective intentions. According to the Executive Framework of Prospective Memory (PM) Development (Mahy et al., 2014b), very young children struggle with encoding, storing, and retrieving the content of their intention. In contrast, older children can remember their intention, but still fail to carry it out, suggesting that their failures might be executive in nature (i.e., due to a failure in PM cue detection). One hundred and three 3- and 4-year-olds completed a PM task where they had to put a particular card in a box behind them. Children (<em>n</em> = 86) who forgot to fulfill their intention were asked follow-up questions to determine whether they forgot the content of their intention (retrospective memory failure) or failed to detect the PM cue (PM cue detection failure). Children also completed independent measures of episodic retrospective memory and selective and sustained attention. Results showed that: (1) 3-year-olds often forgot the content of their intention, (2) 4-year-olds mostly remembered the content of their intention but rarely reported detecting the PM cue, (3) episodic retrospective memory was related to children’s ability to answer the retrospective memory question, and (4) selective and sustained attention was unrelated to children’s ability to answer the PM cue detection question. Four possible interpretations for why 4-year-olds were so poor at detecting the PM cue and implications for future work are discussed.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51422,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Development","volume":"78 ","pages":"Article 101707"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2026-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147849733","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":"Influences of training length on the effectiveness of a number board intervention for 6-year-old German kindergartners","authors":"Maria-Aikaterini Chatzaki ,&nbsp;Valérie-D. Berner ,&nbsp;Korbinian Moeller","doi":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101684","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101684","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Game-based learning approaches are an effective way of facilitating mathematical learning in early childhood. Considering constraints on staff and time resources in early childhood education, this study evaluated whether a four-session intervention using a linear number board game, designed to foster early mathematical development in preschool children aged around 6 years would lead to significantly more pronounced early mathematical development compared to a business as usual control group und thus behave similarly to a longer six-session intervention using the same game. Mathematical development was considered in terms of progressions, stagnations, and regressions across levels of early mathematical development as assessed by a standardized test of early mathematical skills. Results indicated that changes from pre- to post-test differed significantly across groups with both, the groups completing four or six game sessions presenting with significantly more pronounced mathematical development compared to the control group. In particular, the six-session group yielded the most progressions, followed by the four-session group, and the control group. At the same time, significantly more stagnations were observed for the control group, while regressions to lower levels of mathematical development were minimal for all three groups. These results substantiate that regular engagement with linear number board games can effectively facilitate early mathematical development before school entry, offering a practical and accessible educational tool in early childhood education.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51422,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Development","volume":"78 ","pages":"Article 101684"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2026-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146175015","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":"Functions of autobiographical memory in mother-adolescent reminiscing about emotionally charged events","authors":"Nur Elibol-Pekaslan ,&nbsp;Basak Sahin-Acar ,&nbsp;Michelle D. Leichtman","doi":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101672","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101672","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Memory functions––or the reasons people reminisce––have primarily been studied retrospectively using self-report. In the current study, memory functions were coded directly from emotionally charged conversations between mothers and their adolescents. One hundred and eight Turkish mother-adolescent pairs (<em>M</em> adolescent age 15 years; 1 month) talked about three one-point-in-time events they had experienced together, cued by distinct emotions (sadness, anger, happiness); each utterance was coded using a coding scheme reflecting known functions (social, self, directive). The frequency of memory functions was evaluated by conversation participant, emotion cue, and adolescents’ gender. Self-function was predominant among adolescents, with social and directive functions predominant among mothers. Different patterns of functions across emotions were apparent. Results are discussed in view of prior work on memory functions and cultural contexts of reminiscing.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51422,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Development","volume":"78 ","pages":"Article 101672"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2026-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146116422","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}