Cognitive Development最新文献

{"title":"Children’s meta-perceptions about the out-group and their association with intergroup attitudes","authors":"Noa Golani Marcus ,&nbsp;Meytal Nasie","doi":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101674","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101674","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Intergroup meta-perceptions are beliefs regarding views the out-group holds about one’s in-group. Although intergroup meta-perceptions may have a critical role in intergroup relations, their manifestations and implications have not been studied in children. This study examines the meta-perceptions of 108 Jewish-Israeli children (5–8- and 11-year-olds, 46 % females) about Arabs (“conflict” out-group) and about Scots (“neutral” out-group) and their association with intergroup attitudes. The findings revealed that already at age 5 children express meta-perceptions of different types and valence about out-groups, and with age, their amount and their complexity increase. In addition, children’s meta-perceptions, in the form of meta-stereotypes about out-groups, are correlated with intergroup attitudes. These findings reveal a divergence in children’s meta-perceptions of unfamiliar neutral versus familiar conflict out-groups (e.g., Scots and Arabs). Specifically, children tend to hold stable, stereotypical meta-perceptions about unfamiliar neutral groups, whereas their meta-perceptions about the familiar conflict out-group are more nuanced. Additionally, there is a developmental shift: younger children typically express negative, stereotypical meta-perceptions about both out-groups, while older children show increasingly positive meta-perceptions about unfamiliar neutral out-groups. Exploring children’s meta-perceptions allows us to identify misperceptions that may require early intervention.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51422,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Development","volume":"78 ","pages":"Article 101674"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2026-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146116421","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":"Shaping minds together: A pilot study of the cooperation council’s impact on 8-year-olds’ executive function","authors":"Philippe Gay ,&nbsp;Amélie Cassaz ,&nbsp;Catherine Audrin ,&nbsp;Sébastien Urben ,&nbsp;Elena Lucciarini ,&nbsp;Sylvie Richard ,&nbsp;Nicolas Bressoud","doi":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101702","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101702","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Self-regulation, including executive function (EF), refers to essential processes that enable children to regulate their thoughts, emotions, and behaviors in alignment with environmental demands, particularly in school settings. While various interventions exist to enhance EF, there is a need for cost-effective, classroom-based approaches. This pilot study examined whether a nine-week cooperative council intervention could enhance EF performance in 8-year-old children. Seventy-six students from six fourth-grade classes were assigned to either an experimental group, which engaged in weekly structured cooperative councils, or a control group, which followed standard curriculum. EF was measured pre- and post-intervention using an adapted Head–Toes–Knees–Shoulders task. Results revealed a significant greater improvement in EF among the experimental group. We argue that cooperative councils support cognitive development by requiring inhibitory control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility during social interactions. These low-cost, classroom-based routines may offer a practical avenue to foster self-regulation and learning in everyday school settings. Future work should involve randomized designs, longitudinal follow-up, and exploration of mechanisms underlying EF improvement.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51422,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Development","volume":"78 ","pages":"Article 101702"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2026-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147649493","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":"Exposure to repeated behaviors in everyday life and pattern recognition ability predict preschoolers' subsequent theory of mind","authors":"Ted Ruffman ,&nbsp;Jill Hayhurst ,&nbsp;Ben Lorimer ,&nbsp;Aastha Puri ,&nbsp;Kangning Du ,&nbsp;Damian Scarf ,&nbsp;Qiuyi Kong","doi":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101686","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101686","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We examined whether two variables – pattern recognition (i.e., predicting which chute a ball would come down), and exposure to repeated behaviors in the home environment (e.g., drinking from a cup or folding washing multiple times) – predicted children’s later theory of mind (ToM). These two variables have been hypothesized to assist ToM development because they help children learn to recognize patterns in behavior, and therefore predict future behavior. Because this behavior is underpinned by mental states (e.g., people act in particular ways due to their desires and beliefs), repeated behaviors accompanied by pattern recognition should also help children to eventually acquire a ToM. We studied these questions using a longitudinal study of 56 children (primarily of European ethnicity, 22 girls, 34 boys) at four timepoints (21, 24, 27 and 30 months). Replicating previous research, we found that repeated behaviors were very frequent (<em>M</em> = 143.4 per hour). Crucially, we also found that both repeated behaviors and pattern recognition were unique predictors of children’s subsequent ToM (along with their earlier language ability), consistent with the idea that pattern recognition and repeated behaviors facilitate children’s subsequent ToM.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51422,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Development","volume":"78 ","pages":"Article 101686"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2026-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146175012","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":"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":"Executive functions and decision making in childhood: A systematic review","authors":"Angélica Mendes ,&nbsp;David Levi Tekampe ,&nbsp;Samuel Greiff ,&nbsp;Katarzyna Bobrowicz","doi":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101714","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101714","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Decision making, as a higher-order cognitive process, is often linked to core executive functions (EF): working memory, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility. These functions undergo significant development throughout childhood, shaping how individuals interact with their environment. Although numerous studies have examined the relationship between EF and decision-making paradigms in childhood, findings have remained inconclusive. This systematic review synthesizes evidence from 57 studies to examine how each EF component contributes to intertemporal, social, and probabilistic decision-making tasks in children up to 12 years of age. Overall, 45.7% of analyses reported significant associations. A clear developmental pattern emerged: EFs exert a stronger influence on decision making in early childhood, but their relative contribution decreases in later stages of development. Additionally, inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility were more predictive of decision-making performance in younger children, whereas working memory became more influential later in development. Intertemporal and probabilistic decision-making tasks showed variable associations across studies, while social decision-making tasks exhibited consistently weaker associations with EF components. Together, these findings highlight that the relationship between EF and decision making is developmentally dynamic rather than static, shaped not only by age but also by task characteristics and measurement inconsistencies.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51422,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Development","volume":"78 ","pages":"Article 101714"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2026-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147950900","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":"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":"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":"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}