Cognitive Development最新文献

{"title":"Learning gestures as object labels through cross-situational learning in 3- to 4-year-old children","authors":"Arianna Colombani,&nbsp;Mridula Sharma,&nbsp;Outi Tuomainen,&nbsp;Amanda Saksida","doi":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101737","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101737","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study examined whether 3-to-4-year-old toddlers can learn unfamiliar sign language-like gestures (pseudosigns) as linguistic labels by tracking their co-occurrence with spoken words across ambiguous learning trials (cross-situational learning). Forty-four children participated in a brief learning phase involving 6 spoken word-gesture pairs. Learning was assessed via eye tracking using a preferential looking paradigm in two test blocks: one evaluating word-to-gesture associations (<em>association block</em>) and another evaluating gesture-to-referent mapping (<em>mapping block</em>). A control block confirmed that children could successfully map familiar spoken words to referents, validating task comprehension and engagement. In the main analysis, no evidence of learning emerged at the group level: children did not show systematic preferences for the target, and looking behaviour did not correlate with standardized measures of cognitive or language skills. Exploratory analyses indicated age-related variability in looking behaviour across blocks. Although no reliable learning effects emerged in the full sample or age groups separately, reducing inter-individual variability based on task engagement (<em>control block</em>) revealed significant looking preferences in the older group, potentially reflecting increased symbolic flexibility at this age. Taken together, these findings suggest that any learning effects, if present, were small and heterogeneous, and methodological factors – including sample size, task complexity, and limited exposure – may limit their detection. While preliminary, these findings help delineate methodological considerations for extending cross-situational learning paradigms beyond the spoken modality and inform future research on novel approaches to investigate multimodal language acquisition in early development.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51422,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Development","volume":"79 ","pages":"Article 101737"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2026-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148499471","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 relation between attention, inhibitory control and spatial working memory in 3- and 4-year-olds","authors":"Yinbo Wu,&nbsp;Anne R. Schutte","doi":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101744","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101744","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Working memory, inhibitory control and attention are key contributors to school readiness, STEM achievement and self-regulation. Yet the relations between these core variables in early childhood are not clear. This study addressed the relation of attention and inhibitory control to spatial working memory among young children. Specifically, the study investigated how attention and inhibitory control were associated with spatial working memory span, accuracy and biases in 3- and 4-year-olds. Seventy-one children were assessed using working memory and attention tasks. Parents completed the attentional focusing and shifting and inhibitory control subscales of the Children’s Behavior Questionnaire. Greater sustained attention was associated with greater forward spatial span, spatial memory accuracy and greater spatial memory biases away from the symmetry axis of the computer monitor, a more developmentally advanced memory response. The association between inhibitory control and spatial working memory was not significant. This study provides evidence for the relation between attention and spatial working memory in early childhood. The non-significant relation between inhibitory control and spatial working memory is discussed.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51422,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Development","volume":"79 ","pages":"Article 101744"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2026-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148499482","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":"Do infants attribute false beliefs to a visible agent with no visual access?","authors":"Diane Poulin-Dubois,&nbsp;Elizabeth J. Goldman","doi":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101745","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101745","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Infants’ ability to attribute false beliefs has been widely studied using the violation-of-expectation (VOE) paradigm. However, the robustness of these findings remains debated, particularly when methodological variations are introduced. This study examined whether 16-month-old infants attribute false beliefs to agents who are physically present but lack perceptual access to a change in object location. In two conceptual replications of the false belief VOE paradigm, we manipulated the agent’s visual access during the belief-induction trial: the agent wore an opaque veil (Experiment 1), or the agent turned her back (Experiment 2). Results showed no significant differences in looking time between the Congruent and Incongruent conditions, and Bayesian analyses provided moderate support for the null hypothesis. These findings suggest that infants may not flexibly attribute false beliefs across contexts, raising questions about the generalizability and robustness of early false belief understanding.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51422,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Development","volume":"79 ","pages":"Article 101745"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2026-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148499473","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":"Moral judgments toward robots in Japanese preschool children","authors":"Shinnosuke Ikeda","doi":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101755","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101755","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Previous research has shown that younger children are more likely to attribute minds to robots, whereas with age they tend to show less empathy toward robots and become more accepting of immoral behavior directed at them. However, these developmental trends have been documented primarily in Western contexts, and the pattern may differ across cultures. The present study investigated Japanese preschool children to examine the extent to which they attributed minds to humans, mechanical robots, and humanoid robots, and the degree to which they tolerated immoral behavior toward each of these targets. The results revealed no significant association between mind attribution and tolerance of immoral behavior. Instead, increasing age was associated with reduced tolerance of immoral behavior toward humans; at the bivariate level a comparable association emerged for mechanical robots, but in the exploratory regression model age showed a nominal association only with judgments concerning humans. These findings raise the possibility that, within Japanese cultural contexts, children come to treat violence toward robots and humanoids as socially unacceptable, and that this concern may not be closely coupled with explicit mind attribution. Given the preliminary nature of this study, larger and more sensitive investigations are needed to test this possibility.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51422,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Development","volume":"79 ","pages":"Article 101755"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2026-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148634934","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":"Gaze-induced exogenous attentional deficits in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: Evidence from oculomotor inhibition of return and linear ballistic accumulator modeling","authors":"Jiaqi Wang,&nbsp;Aijun Wang,&nbsp;Jiacan Gu,&nbsp;Shizhong Cai,&nbsp;Ming Zhang","doi":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101764","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101764","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a common neurodevelopmental disorder in children. Prior research indicated that children with ADHD often experience deficits in social cognition, particularly in understanding and responding to social signals like eye gaze. Nonetheless, it is not clear whether they can produce normal attentional orienting to gaze cues. The present study used a gaze cue-target paradigm, with the oculomotor inhibition of return (IOR) effect as an indicator of exogenous attentional orienting, to examine whether the ability of children with ADHD to produce exogenous attentional orienting to gaze cues is impaired. The results showed that typically developing (TD) children produced the oculomotor IOR effect induced by gaze cues, whereas children with ADHD did not produce the oculomotor IOR effect. These results indicated that the ability to produce exogenous attentional orienting to gaze cues is impaired in children with ADHD. The linear ballistic accumulator (LBA) model further revealed that, in TD children, gaze cues modulated information-processing efficiency during the oculomotor IOR time window. However, in children with ADHD, information-processing efficiency was not affected by gaze cues during this time window. These findings provide evidence from eye movement and computational modeling for social cognitive deficits and attentional orienting deficits in children with ADHD.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51422,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Development","volume":"79 ","pages":"Article 101764"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2026-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148776451","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":"Drift-diffusion model reveals impaired metacognition among adolescents and adults with major depressive disorder","authors":"Jinghan Cheng,&nbsp;Xiaotong Cheng,&nbsp;Jie Zhou,&nbsp;Juan Deng,&nbsp;Shuang Feng,&nbsp;Yu Sun,&nbsp;Ke Gong,&nbsp;Kezhi Liu,&nbsp;Cuizhen Liu,&nbsp;Wei Lei,&nbsp;Jing Chen","doi":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101763","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101763","url":null,"abstract":"<div><h3>Introduction</h3><div>Metacognition is crucial for effective decision-making, but research on its impairment in Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) remains limited. This study assessed metacognitive efficiency and bias in adolescent and adult MDD patients, and explored their associations with decision-making dynamics and clinical symptoms.</div></div><div><h3>Methods</h3><div>A total of 258 adolescents (135 with MDD) and 115 adults ( 63 with MDD) completed a Perceptual discrimination task with retrospective confidence ratings. Metacognitive efficiency and bias were calculated and compared across diagnostic and age groups. Decision-making temporal dynamics was assessed using the Drift Diffusion Model, DDM. Associations between metacognitive metrics, DDM parameters, and clinical symptoms were evaluated via regression and mediation analysis.</div></div><div><h3>Results</h3><div>Perceptual performance was comparable across all groups. Trial-level regression models showed comparable task performance across diagnostic and age groups. Regarding metacognitive metrics, MDD-related metacognitive impairments exhibited significant age specificity: adults with MDD primarily demonstrated reduced metacognitive sensitivity (meta-d’) and metacognitive efficiency (Mratio), while adolescents with MDD additionally revealed lower confidence level (confidence bias) compared with corresponding HCs. DDM analysis showed significantly wider decision boundaries (a) and lower drift rates (v) in MDD patients relative to HCs. Moreover, the detrimental effect of MDD on confidence bias was partially mediated by increased decision boundaries and reduced drift rates. Reduced metacognitive efficiency in MDD was also partially attributable to wider decision boundary.</div></div><div><h3>Conclusions</h3><div>MDD patients exhibited impaired metacognitive sensitivity and efficiency across adolescent and adult populations, indicating broad impairments in metacognitive ability. These impairments were partially linked to wider decision boundaries and reduced drift rates in perceptual judgments, suggesting a contribution of cognitive processing in metacognitive abnormalities.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51422,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Development","volume":"79 ","pages":"Article 101763"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2026-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148776450","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":"Differences in mother–child brain synchronization during storytelling in Literary Arabic versus Spoken Arabic","authors":"Tzipi Horowitz-Kraus,&nbsp;Georgina Abu Ghanima,&nbsp;Arielle G. Fischer,&nbsp;Dorottya Agoston,&nbsp;Azhar Badarna,&nbsp;Ronen Talmon,&nbsp;Rola Farah","doi":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101754","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101754","url":null,"abstract":"<div><h3>Introduction</h3><div>Arabic is a diglossic language comprising Spoken Arabic (SA) and Literary Arabic (LA), often leading to Arabic speakers being considered functional bilinguals. While early exposure to LA has been associated with improved reading comprehension, the neurobiological basis of SA–LA processing differences in pre-readers is not well understood. Methods: Thirty-one Arabic-speaking mother–child dyads (children’s mean age = 5.2 years, SD = 0.63; 18 girls) participated in a hyperscanning EEG study during dialogic reading sessions in both SA and LA. Brain–to–brain synchronization was measured using correlation coefficient matrices and compared across language conditions. Synchronization differences were analyzed in relation to vocabulary and listening comprehension scores. Results: Mother–child neural synchronization was greater during SA reading compared to LA. Greater synchronization differences between conditions were associated with slower object-naming speed (r = .473, p = .007). Exploratory region-based analyses revealed associations between synchronization and vocabulary and listening-comprehension measures. Diffusion-map analyses indicated distinct synchronization patterns between SA and LA, with greater joint-attention variability in SA than LA (p = .05), while motion synchronization did not differ between conditions. Conclusion: This study provides neurobiological evidence of reduced neural alignment during LA exposure compared to SA in Arabic-speaking pre-readers. The observed patterns of brain–to–brain synchronization align with findings in bilingual populations, suggesting greater cognitive effort when processing LA. These findings highlight the need for targeted early interventions to support LA acquisition and enhance mother–child neural synchrony during shared reading.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51422,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Development","volume":"79 ","pages":"Article 101754"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2026-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148735242","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":"Executive function and the economics of norm compliance in preschoolers","authors":"Sarah D. English,&nbsp;Nancy M. Garon,&nbsp;Clare S. Maguire","doi":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101747","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101747","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Research indicates that norm understanding, as indicated by complying to and enforcing social norms, develops during the preschool years. In addition, children refine prosocial behaviors during this time. These emerging skills engage both affective and cognitive control processes, commonly conceptualized as hot and cool executive function (EF) abilities. While these EF domains have been studied separately, few studies have examined the impact of their interaction on more complex cognitive abilities. Therefore, the current study examined the effects of both hot and cool EF on preschool children’s sharing behaviors after participating in an economic game designed to model novel fairness norms. We tested 101 three- and four-year-old children (<em>M</em> = 4;1 years, <em>SD</em> = 0;8) including 55 girls and 46 boys. Participants completed a task to assess social norm learning which included three phases: baseline sharing, norm learning, and post-manipulation sharing. Participants also completed several EF tasks including working memory, response inhibition, as well as the Preschool Gambling task. We found that exposure to a generous or stingy model of sharing did not significantly influence children’s subsequent sharing behavior. However, children in the generous condition were more likely to reject unfair offers. This was especially true for older preschoolers, suggesting they were more flexible in applying the new norm. Moreover, a cluster analysis resulting in three distinct groups differing on baseline sharing and rejection rates suggested that individual differences may be a stronger factor in determining sharing behaviors. These groups demonstrated unique profiles of hot and cool EF abilities, indicating that a balanced combination of both types of EF may support adaptive social decision-making. These results provide new insight into the early processes underlying social norm learning, and more broadly, prosocial development.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51422,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Development","volume":"79 ","pages":"Article 101747"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2026-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148499481","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":"Development of short- and long-term preference understanding from the perspective of oneself and another","authors":"Que Anh Pham,&nbsp;Tashauna L. Blankenship","doi":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101758","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101758","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Episodic future thinking – imagining a hypothetical future – may benefit from adopting another person’s perspective (i.e., psychological distance). Psychological distance has been shown to improve decision making in children on a variety of tasks requiring episodic future thinking. This work explores how children imagine their short- and long-term future preferences from the perspective of themselves or a peer using behavioral and eye tracking measures. 129 children were tested (27 2-year-olds, <em>M</em>=31.26 months; 39 3-year-olds, <em>M</em>=42.18 months; 31 4-year-olds, <em>M</em>=54.06 months; 32 5-year-olds, <em>M</em>=63.53 months). The experiment modified the preferences task (Bélanger et al., 2014), where the long-term condition involved imagining what one (or a peer) would like when they are grown up and the short-term condition involved imagining what one (or a peer) would like tonight. In both cases, children selected between two items: in the long-term, adult versus child items; in the short-term, nighttime versus daytime items. Children’s performance improved with age in both short- and long-term conditions. The long-term condition was more difficult than the short-term condition, with even 4–5-year-olds performing at chance whereas in the short-term condition, 4–5-year-olds performed close to ceiling. A significant interaction was found between the temporal (long-term and short-term) conditions and the perspective (oneself or another) conditions whereby children benefited from thinking from a peer’s perspective only in the long-term. In the short-term condition, performance when utilizing one’s own and another’s perspective did not significantly differ. Eye tracking was overall consistent with children’s verbal answers, validating children’s explicit understanding of their future preferences.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51422,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Development","volume":"79 ","pages":"Article 101758"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2026-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148634169","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":"Examining preschoolers’ social-cognitive skills and persuasion styles in a novel persuasion task","authors":"Elizabeth B. Kim,&nbsp;Nastassja L. Fischer,&nbsp;Nawal Hashim,&nbsp;Ee Lynn Ng,&nbsp;Wei-Jun Jean Yeung,&nbsp;Rongjun Yu","doi":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101741","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101741","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Building persuasion skills in early childhood may positively impact leadership development later in life. Yet, empirical research on how persuasion can be assessed in early childhood and what factors predict it remains limited. This study presented a paradigm for assessing persuasion skills in young children, using a negotiation task involving control of a high-value resource. Additionally, the current study examined whether persuasion styles are predicted by children’s cognitive and emotion abilities. Seventy-three 3- to 6-year-old Singaporean preschoolers participated in the persuasion task. Children also completed a series of tasks measuring executive function, language, theory of mind, and emotion knowledge skills. Four persuasion styles were identified based on the strategies children used during the task: rationalizing, passive, deceptive, and authoritarian. Theory of mind skills were positively associated with rationalizing persuasion style, and short-term memory was negatively associated with the deceptive persuasion style. Results from hierarchical regression analyses showed that after controlling for children’s age, socioeconomic status, reading ability, and short-term memory, preschoolers’ emotion recognition skill was a significant predictor of the deceptive persuasion style, and appearance-reality and false-belief scores were significant predictors of the authoritarian persuasion style. These findings provide a novel framework for assessing early childhood persuasion skills and highlight the foundational role of early social-cognitive abilities in shaping distinct persuasion styles.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51422,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Development","volume":"79 ","pages":"Article 101741"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2026-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148499475","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}