Developmental Psychology

Development is about creating something more from something less, for example, a walking and talking toddler from a helpless infant. One current theoretical framework views the developmental process as a change within a complex dynamic system.…

Research on theory of mind increasingly encompasses apparently contradictory findings. In particular, in initial studies, older preschoolers consistently passed false-belief tasks-a so-called "definitive" test of mental-state understanding-whereas…

The capacity to control emotion is important for human adaptation. Questions about the neural bases of emotion regulation have recently taken on new importance, as functional imaging studies in humans have permitted direct investigation of control…

Questions about the nature of normative and atypical development in adolescence have taken on special significance in the last few years, as scientists have begun to recast old portraits of adolescent behavior in the light of new knowledge about…

An intervention facilitated 3-month-old infants' apprehension of objects either prior to (reach first), or after (watch first) viewing another person grasp similar objects in a visual habituation procedure. Action experience facilitated action…

We propose that human communication is specifically adapted to allow the transmission of generic knowledge between individuals. Such a communication system, which we call 'natural pedagogy', enables fast and efficient social learning of cognitively…

In this article, we attempt to distinguish between the properties of moderator and mediator variables at a number of levels. First, we seek to make theorists and researchers aware of the importance of not using the terms moderator and mediator…

We propose that the crucial difference between human cognition and that of other species is the ability to participate with others in collaborative activities with shared goals and intentions: shared intentionality. Participation in such activities…

Compex cognitive skills such as reading and calculation and complex cognitive achievements such as formal science and mathematics may depend on a set of building block systems that emerge early in human ontogeny and phylogeny. These core knowledge…

This study examined the role of self-regulation in emerging academic ability in one hundred and forty-one 3- to 5-year-old children from low-income homes. Measures of effortful control, false belief understanding, and the inhibitory control and…

It is a truism that development involves contributions from both genes and environment, but theories differ with respect to the roles they attribute to each, which deeply affects the ways in which developmental disorders are researched. The strict…

Research with young children has shown that, like adults, they focus selectively on the aspects of an actor's behavior that are relevant to his or her underlying intentions. The current studies used the visual habituation paradigm to ask whether…

The rapidity with which infants come to understand language and events in their surroundings has prompted speculation concerning innate knowledge structures that guide language acquisition and object knowledge. Recently, however, evidence has…

In simple tests of preference, infants as young as newborns prefer faces and face-like stimuli over distractors. Little is known, however, about the development of attention to faces in complex scenes. We recorded eye-movements of 3-, 6-, and…

The prefrontal cortex has long been suspected to play an important role in cognitive control, in the ability to orchestrate thought and action in accordance with internal goals. Its neural basis, however, has remained a mystery. Here, we propose…

Adolescence is a time of considerable development at the level of behaviour, cognition and the brain. This article reviews histological and brain imaging studies that have demonstrated specific changes in neural architecture during puberty and…

This research examined the relation between individual differences in inhibitory control (IC; a central component of executive functioning) and theory-of-mind (ToM) performance in preschool-age children. Across two sessions, 3- and 4-year-old…

The understanding of nature and nurture within developmental science has evolved with alternating ascendance of one or the other as primary explanations for individual differences in life course trajectories of success or failure. A dialectical…

Anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is a part of the brain's limbic system. Classically, this region has been related to affect, on the basis of lesion studies in humans and in animals. In the late 1980s, neuroimaging research indicated that ACC was…

This paper presents a critical appraisal of resilience, a construct connoting the maintenance of positive adaptation by individuals despite experiences of significant adversity. As empirical research on resilience has burgeoned in recent years,…