Though disagreement provides valuable chances to learn, people typically avoid it. This study tested whether understanding that people can hold different views because they have interpreted the same evidence differently predicts children's and adults' interest in talking to someone with a different belief (children: 6 to 11 years; N = 97; 50 females, 47 males; diverse ethnicities; adults: N = 100; 49 females, 49 males, 1 gender-queer, 1 non-binary; diverse ethnicities). Data were collected between November 2024 and March 2025. Participants were first asked about their beliefs on different topics, then asked whether they wanted to talk to someone who agreed or disagreed with them to learn more. Interpretive theory of mind (iToM) was then measured using 2 paradigms assessing the ability to recognize that 2 people could interpret the same ambiguous stimuli differently. Higher iToM predicted greater willingness to seek out disagreement to increase learning. For children, this held across belief domains, whereas for adults it was only true for moral questions and ambiguous situations, not settled facts or personal preferences. The effect was stronger in children than adults when beliefs concerned preferences. These findings suggest that iToM may be required for understanding the epistemic value of disagreement.

This Registered Report tested perinatal predictors of infant resting respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), an index of parasympathetic functioning. Maternal RSA was collected at a resting state during the third trimester of pregnancy (N = 385, 56.9% of the pregnant mothers were White, non-Hispanic/Latina). Newborn attention and arousal were assessed shortly after birth. When infants (48% are male, and 50.7% are White, non-Hispanic/Latino) were 7 months old, their resting RSA was measured, and maternal sensitivity during a free-play interaction was coded. Greater maternal prenatal RSA was found to be associated with greater infant resting RSA. This longitudinal and intergenerational association was not significantly moderated or mediated by newborn neurobehavior or maternal sensitivity. Findings suggest that infant RSA may have roots in mothers' parasympathetic functioning during pregnancy.

We assessed the effects of scene features and locomotor status on visual fixations in 52 infants (Mage = 26.51 weeks, SDage = 4.77; 28 boys, 23 girls; 24 infants were White and non-Hispanic and 28 were Asian, Black, Mixed Race, and/or Hispanic) while viewing photographs of naturalistic spaces, such as living rooms containing furniture and toys. We evaluated the impact of local meaning, defined by adult ratings of information density at specific scene locations. This local meaning affected crawling and non-crawling infants differently depending on perspective. Whereas non-crawlers fixated high-meaning areas in lower vantage point scenes, crawlers prioritized meaning from higher vantage points, suggesting that independent self-locomotion may tune cognitive resources to prioritize new features of the visual world.

This study examined early language abilities as a mediator of intergenerational socioeconomic status (SES). In a 30-year longitudinal study (N = 114, 98% White, 53% male, monolingual English speakers), participants were tracked from kindergarten to age 36 with measures of language, nonverbal IQ, academic achievement, and SES. Early language ability, independent of IQ, explained nearly a quarter (24%) of adult SES variance through two pathways. The persistence pathway (7.8%) showed language mediated 66% of intergenerational SES transmission. The mobility pathway (16.1%) showed language predicted deviation from family-based expectations, with twice the contribution to mobility as to persistence. Tenth-grade academic achievement added no reliable unique variance, suggesting language operates through mechanisms beyond formal education. Oral language emerges as a candidate mechanism linking family circumstances to adult socioeconomic outcomes.

Children with language difficulties are at elevated risk of mental health problems, yet tools commonly used to assess mental health rely heavily on language. It is unclear if children's language ability influences their self-report measures. We tested language-related measurement invariance using moderated non-linear factor analyses. We used self-report data from children (10-11 years) with a wide range of language abilities, living in the UK, on the Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale-25 (RCADS-25; n = 342; 171 female; 80 with language difficulties) and the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire-Youth Report (SDQ-YR; n = 349; 174 female; 84 with language difficulties). Language-related differences were identified in both measures: six RCADS-25 items and three SDQ-YR items functioned differently in relation to language ability. For the RCADS-25, these differences did not affect anxiety and depression factor means. For the SDQ-YR, language-related item differences did affect peer problems and prosocial factor means, but not emotional problems, conduct problems, or hyperactivity. RCADS-25 factor scores appear robust for children with language difficulties, though item responses should be interpreted cautiously. In contrast, language-related differences in the SDQ-YR may limit comparisons of peer problems and prosocial subscales across children with differing language abilities.

Even young toddlers coordinate actions with a partner. But coordinating choices or decisions is more challenging, particularly in multi-party groups. In this pre-registered study (data collected from Fall 2023 to Spring 2025), 2- and 3-year-olds (n = 100, 50% female, 26% underrepresented minority) needed to select "keys" that matched in color to open a box. Children coordinated with one another in same-aged dyads or triads. In dyads, children of both ages were mostly successful, whereas 3-year-olds were much more successful than 2-year-olds in triads. This was especially true in a generalization trial in which only one of ten 2-year-old triads was successful, while all other groups were successful. Success at both ages was predicted by rates of cooperative communication about their choice of key. These results demonstrate that even 2-year-olds can coordinate choices with a single partner, but doing so in groups tends to emerge at around age three, when children begin to develop more advanced ways of thinking about and working with others.

Toddlers must rapidly acquire new skills. However, these attempts frequently come with experiences of failure which can be frustrating and lead to disengagement. Given that young children are naturally inclined to enact novel exploratory strategies in response to failure, independent exploration may sustain toddlers' persistence by shaping their perceptions of task success and offering them opportunities to experience a sense of agency. Here, these relations are examined using both archival data from the United States (n = 71, 18-month-olds; 26 female, 45 male; 72% white, originally tested in 2018) and an experimental intervention in Canada (n = 60, 18-24-month-olds; 30 female, 30 male; 25% white, tested in 2024 and 2025). The number of unique strategies that toddlers generated related to their overall persistence (ηp2 = .57). Further, experimentally encouraging exploration caused toddlers to persist longer (ηp2 = .24), and this effect was mediated by the number of unique strategies toddlers enacted (ab = 13.33, 95% CI [9.84, 16.72]). These findings provide converging correlational and causal evidence that exploration supports persistence during problem-solving, suggesting that encouraging exploration may be an effective intervention to foster persistence in early childhood.

This systematic review and meta-analysis examined the impacts of interventions targeting social-emotional outcomes for young children (<8 years) living in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Eighty-six (quasi-)experimental studies published prior to May, 2024 were included, reporting on 107 school-, home-, and community-based interventions with 27,378 children from 26 LMICs. Included interventions ranged in their content (social-emotional vs. not), setting of implementations (homes, schools, communities), target recipients (children vs. adults), and dosage. On average, interventions improved children's social-emotional outcomes by 0.47 SD (95%CI [0.36, 0.58]) in the short term (<6 months since intervention) and 0.09 SD [0.01, 0.18] in the long term (≥6 months). However, large variability in intervention effectiveness was only partially explained by the study and intervention characteristics examined. Prediction intervals also crossed zero, implying that future implementations of similar interventions are unlikely to yield universally positive impacts. Evidence for publication bias was also found. Taken together, results suggest that interventions can improve LMIC-based children's measured social-emotional outcomes, but attention to cultural considerations is needed to ensure meaningful and locally prioritized developmental gains.

Within the framework of prototype and revisionist models of attachment, the present study initiated an exploratory effort to examine the commonalities and differences in patterns of perceived attachment experiences-incorporating child-father, child-mother, and peer attachments-and their associations with self-esteem, self-control, and prosocial behavior across three school-aged cohorts (elementary, middle, and high school). Data were collected from 1,646 Chinese youth (Mage = 11.90; 48% girls) in November 2021 and May 2023. Latent profile analyses were conducted within each cohort, followed by the latent profile similarity analysis that enables a systematic examination of multiple levels of (dis)similarity in attachment profile across the cohorts. Results indicated that (1) the elementary and middle school cohorts demonstrated configural, structural, and dispersion similarity, yet distributional similarity was not supported; (2) the high school cohort exhibited configural differences relative to the two younger groups; and (3) explanatory similarity was established between the elementary and middle school cohorts. The findings suggest both convergence and divergence in perceived attachment patterns from late childhood to mid-late adolescence. The study, although cross-sectional, contributes novel pattern-level evidence relevant to advancing the understanding of the dynamic nature of attachment and further substantiating the significance of secure attachment for youths' psychosocial functioning.

Children's numeracy skills at school entry predict future educational attainment. Deaf and hard-of-hearing students are reported to underperform compared with typically hearing peers in mathematics. This study examined the impact of language experience on cardinal principle (CP) knowledge and accuracy in generating large sets in 58 hearing and 120 deaf and hard-of-hearing children ages 3.1-7.6 years who were learning spoken English and/or American Sign Language (ASL). The 178 children represented diverse racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds; 77 were assigned male at birth. Logistic regression models showed that chronological age and age of access to language significantly predicted CP knowledge; however, age of language access was no longer significant after including highest count as a predictor. Logistic regressions further revealed that age and the timing of children's access to language (early/later)-but not language modality or socioeconomic status-significantly predicted accuracy in generating large sets. After including the age at which children began receiving greater access to language, both highest count and language access, along with age, significantly predicted performance. These findings show that both ASL and spoken English support number knowledge development and CP acquisition and that early exposure to accessible language is critical to promoting equity in mathematics outcomes.

The current study explores whether monolingual (n = 32, 17 girls, 15 boys) and multilingual (n = 23, 12 boys, 11 girls) toddlers in French-speaking Switzerland are able to recognize correct pronunciations and detect subtle mispronunciations of familiar words, and whether these early skills are connected to later language abilities. In a looking-while-listening eye-tracking paradigm at 20 months of age, both monolingual and multilingual participants showed significantly higher looking time increases (medium effect size) for pictures of familiar objects (e.g., a foot) when the object was labeled correctly (e.g., pied [pje] "foot") than when it was mispronounced (here, vied [vje]). Notably, processing of correct labels and mispronunciations was moderately correlated with nonword repetition skills, but not vocabulary size, at 36 months, highlighting the predictive value of word recognition tasks for phonological processing.

Empathic accuracy (EA), the ability to correctly perceive another's emotional state, is crucial for emotional communication in parent-adolescent relationships. A total of 112 dyads (adolescent Mage = 14.13; 54.5% girls) participated in a 28-day daily diary study conducted between July 2022 and May 2023. We used the multilevel Actor-Partner Interdependence Model to assess how baseline and daily perceived closeness-reported by both parents and adolescents-predicted parent and adolescent EA in daily life. Results showed that greater perceived closeness predicted lower EA for both the perceiver and their partner, particularly for negative emotions. This is consistent with the motivated inaccuracy perspective: closeness may dampen attention to negative emotions to avoid relational discomfort. Conversely, on days when closeness was low, dyads exhibited greater EA, suggesting compensatory efforts to reconnect.

U.S.-born children of Latino immigrants often begin life with health advantages, yet the developmental conditions that -sustain or erode these advantages remain unclear. Drawing on socioecological and sociocultural perspectives, this study examined whether peer victimization and school belonging in middle childhood predicted changes in epigenetic aging from childhood to adolescence. These associations were compared between children of immigrant and U.S.-born Latina mothers. Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study data were collected in 2007-2010 and 2014-2017 (N = 341; mean age 9.5 years; 50.7% female). Peer victimization and school belonging were self-reported at age 9, and epigenetic age was estimated at ages 9 and 15 using the Pediatric-Buccal-Epigenetic clock. Among children of immigrant mothers, greater victimization predicted faster aging (β = .57, p = .002), whereas stronger school belonging predicted slower aging (β = -.28, p = .034). Victimization predicted faster epigenetic aging only when school belonging was moderate or high, suggesting that social threat may carry greater biological consequences when children are emotionally invested in school. These patterns were not observed among children of U.S.-born Latina mothers. Experiences of inclusion and exclusion may become biologically embedded, shaping whether early health advantages are maintained or eroded over time.

This study followed infants at elevated and average likelihood for autism or ADHD (n = 163) from 6-36 months, classifying them into 36-month outcome groups: Autism (n = 28), ADHD Concerns (n = 20), or Comparison (n = 115). The sample was predominantly male, White, and non-Hispanic. Between 2013 and 2019, caregiver-child dyads played up to five times, with gaze, positive affect, and vocalizations coded from video. Developmental trajectories of dyadic synchrony (the degree of state matching and turn-taking relative to chance) were estimated via mixed-effects models. From 6 to 36 months, overall synchrony was lower in the Autism vs. Comparison group. Within behavior modalities, there were unique patterns of actor responsiveness, with mixed evidence for outcome group differences. Future research should explore links between synchrony, developmental milestones, services, and longer-term outcomes.