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Contains fulltext : 219543.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access) Children who are more proficient in cooperation with peers tend to be more preferred. To date, the development of peer cooperation has been studied mainly in two research traditions, one focusing on action coordination and the other focusing on interaction quality. Both aspects of cooperation are relevant for children's peer relations, but it is unclear whether both aspects of children's earliest cooperation skills predict their later preference by peers after the transition into organized social groups in school. In this study, we assessed coordination proficiency and interaction quality of 181 Dutch children longitudinally from 2 to 4 years of age. No relation between early action coordination and later preference by peers at school was found. However, especially in girls more affiliative and fewer antagonistic behaviors at age 2 predicted likeability among classmates at school at age 4. The findings shine new light on the earliest foundations of children's peer evaluations. 17 p.

Highlights • Intention to imitate increases 4-year-olds’ neural motor activity during action observation. • Top-down attention to others’ actions affects children’s neural action processing. • We propose top-down effects are driven by an oscillation network with frontal theta predicting motor-related alpha/beta power., From early in life, we activate our neural motor system when observing others’ actions. In adults, this so-called mirroring is modulated not only by the saliency of an action but also by top-down processes, like the intention to imitate it. Yet, it remains unknown whether neural processing of others’ actions can be modulated by top-down processes in young children who heavily rely on learning from observing and imitating others but also still develop top-down control skills. Using EEG, we examined whether the intention to imitate increases 4-year-olds’ motor activation while observing others’ actions. In a within-subjects design, children observed identical actions preceded by distinct instructions, namely to either imitate the action or to name the toy’s color. As motor activation index, children’s alpha (7−12 Hz) and beta (16−20 Hz) power over motor cortices was analyzed. The results revealed more motor activity reflected by significantly lower beta power for the Imitation compared to the Color-naming Task. The same conditional difference, although differently located, was detected for alpha power. Together, our results show that children’s neural processing of others’ actions was amplified by their intention to imitate the action. Thus, already at age 4 top-down attention to others’ actions can modulate neural action processing.

Contains fulltext : 202756.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access) Top-down control processes are essential for guiding attention and working memory towards task-relevant information. Recently, theta oscillations were suggested as critical for these cognitive processes. Infant studies testing a mixture of bottom-up and top-down processes support adult theta findings. Yet, since infants cannot be instructed, it remains unclear to what extent theta oscillations are involved particularly in top-down control in early childhood. That is especially relevant towards school age when children need top-down control to solve the increasingly complex tasks. In this EEG study, we investigated whether theta-power in 4-year-olds is sensitive to task engagement and to different cognitive task demands. In a within-subjects design, children had three different instructions before watching videos including either no demands (No Task), language-related (Color-naming Task), or action-related (Imitation Task) demands. We analyzed children's theta-power (3-6 Hz) in two contrasts: (1) Task vs. No Task and (2) Color-naming vs. Imitation Task. The findings revealed more frontomedial theta-power when children were engaged in a task and their frontomedial theta-power increased during their cognitive engagement. Theta-power was stronger over left fronto-temporal sites for language- compared to action-related demands. These findings support recent theoretical work highlighting theta oscillations in top-down control and extend this neurocognitive framework to preschoolers. 11 p.

Cooperation with peers is challenging for young children, and there are large individual differences in the development of cooperation. The roles of child characteristics and peer experiences for peer interaction during free play have been studied extensively, but it is unclear which factors predict young children's successful cooperation at different points in development. In this study, 2-, 3-, and 4-year-old children were observed during a peer cooperation task. Both their interactive behavior and cooperation success were examined, and the association of these variables with child characteristics and peer experiences was explored. Results showed that successful peer cooperation increased with age. Moreover, early individual differences in peer cooperation were related to temperamental characteristics, and, among older children, the rate of cooperation was related to prior peer experience.

Contains fulltext : 140570.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Closed access) During social interaction, the behavior of interacting partners becomes coordinated. Although interpersonal coordination is well-studied in adults, relatively little is known about its development. In this project we explored how 2-, 3-, and 4-year-old children spontaneously coordinated their drumming with a peer. Results showed that all children adapted their drumming to their partner's drumming by starting and stopping their drumming in a coordinated fashion, but only 4-year-olds adapted the rhythmic structure of their drumming to their partner's drumming. In all age groups, children showed similarly stable drumming. Typically, it was 1 of the 2 children who initiated drumming throughout the session. The results of this study offer new insights into the development of interpersonal coordination abilities in early childhood. 8 p.