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Two experiments investigated young children's understanding of how and when knowledge was acquired. In Experiment 1, thirty 4- and 5-year-olds were shown or told about various toys hidden in distinctive containers in two sessions a week apart. In the second session, children were asked how and when they learned the containers' contents. They more accurately reported how, than when, the information was learned. In Experiment 2, thirty 4- and 5-year-olds were administered similar learning tasks but were additionally asked which information had been known longer. This comparative question elicited more correct responses, comparable to those regarding how learning occurred. Results from these direct comparisons of reports of how and when knowledge was acquired offer resolution to apparent discrepancies in prior empirical reports and contribute to a cogent characterization of children's developing understanding of knowledge acquisition. (Contains 2 figures and 2 tables.)

Until now children's attention to the beliefs of people they wish to persuade has been examined experimentally via tasks that were artificial in important respects. To determine whether such research has underestimated children's psychological perspective taking, two studies that manipulated task elements pertinent to ecological validity were conducted. Children in three age groups (3, 4/5, and 6/7 years) were asked (forced-choice and open-ended formats) how best to persuade puppets and people, with differing beliefs, to pet and play with various toy animals. Children offered as many or more belief-relevant arguments in response to forced-choice as to open-ended questions. Only the oldest group attended to beliefs more when persuading a person compared with a puppet. Even on more realistic tasks, significant improvement with age across task formats confirmed a developmental trajectory in line with extant reports of children's belief reasoning. The findings support the idea that enhanced social competence corresponds specifically to children's increasing attention to beliefs in social interactions such as persuasion.

Young children's persuasion tactics, and how these reflected attunement to others' mental states, were explored in archived longitudinal samples of transcribed at-home conversations of four children, three to five years old. Over 87,000 utterances were examined to identify conversation "chunks" involving persuasion; 1,307 chunks were then coded for who initiated the persuasion, the persuader's goal, tactics employed, the presence of cues about others' beliefs and desires, and whether children attended to such information. Analyses suggested that persuasion exchanges were initiated similarly by children and adults, were stable in frequency and length across time, and involved a limited set of persuasion tactics. Children's attempts to change beliefs increased although explicit mental-state cues were only rarely available. When such cues were available, children more often than not altered their tactics. Implications for our understanding of children's developing social cognition and theory of mind, as well as the limitations of conversational analysis, are discussed.

Two children's conversations with adults were examined for reference to moral issues using transcripts of archived at-home family talk from the Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES) database (MacWhinney, 2000). Through target words (e.g., good, wrong, mean) in transcripts of two children between ages 2.5 and 5.0 years, 1,333 moral conversations were identified. Conversations were examined for whether and when children discussed moral issues, how they used moral words (e.g., to communicate feelings, ask for reasons, etc.), what was discussed and in what contexts, and whether children were active or passive contributors. The resulting case study portraits of early moral sensibility extend and challenge extant findings, revealing substantive differences between the two children's moral sensibilities as well as commonalities, including a tendency to be active rather than passive in moral conversation, to focus on the dispositions/behaviors of others, and to engage in moral conversation primarily to give/ask for reasons, communicate feelings, and (dis)approve. (Contains 1 figure and 4 tables.)

This study investigated young children's reports of when learning occurred. A total of 96 4-, 5-, and 6-year-olds were recruited from suburban preschools and elementary schools. The children learned an animal fact and a body movement. A week later, children learned another animal fact and another body movement and then answered questions about when the different learning events occurred. Responses of children who responded correctly to control questions about time supported the hypothesis that temporal distance questions would elicit more correct responses than would temporal location questions. Partial support was also found for the hypothesis that behavior learning would generate more correct reports than would fact learning. Implications for characterizations of children's developing understanding of knowledge and for applications of those characterizations in education and eyewitness testimony are discussed.

A method for eliciting extended explanations was used to evaluate predictions from the "theory-theory" account of developing psychological reasoning. Children were repeatedly asked to explain the actions or emotions of story characters with false beliefs. Questioning elicited false belief attributions in half of 3-year-olds (Study 1, N = 16, age M = 3;6) and most 4-year-olds who failed belief prediction tasks (Study 2, N = 30, M = 4;5). In Study 3, 30 prediction failers (M = 5;1) gave significantly more false belief explanations for emotions than for actions. Across the studies, desire and emotion explanations emerged early and often, reflecting the primacy of these constructs in the children's understanding of psychological causality. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for developmental mechanism. (Contains 3 tables.)

Whether and when children can apply their developing understanding of belief to persuasion was examined using interactive puppet tasks. Children selected 1 of 2 arguments to persuade a puppet to do something (e.g., pet a dog) after hearing the puppet's belief (e.g., "I think puppies bite"). Across 2 studies, 132 children (ages 3-7 years) engaged in these persuasion tasks and in false-belief reasoning tasks, presented in puppet and story formats. Belief-relevant argument selection increased with age, as did appropriate reasoning about false beliefs, and occurred more in puppet than story tasks. Results suggest that improvements in belief reasoning in early childhood may be reflected in social interactions such as persuasion.

Examined whether and when children use information about others' mental states to invent or select persuasive strategies in three studies. Found older children, but not preschoolers, used belief information in stories to select arguments; and kindergartners' and first-graders' reasoning on false belief tasks suggested the failure to consider mental states was not due to lack of a belief concept. (Author/KB)

Explored whether and how understanding of biological explanation changes with development. Found that adults and children similarly distinguished between biology and psychology and about specific processes underlying biological change. Children's attributions of intention to biological organs or body parts did not differ from those of adults. Concluded that children's thinking about biology is not necessarily more vitalistic than adults'. (MOK)

Two experiments investigated whether children, averaging three years old, used a transition theory in their developing understanding of mind or whether their interpretation moved from a desire-focused theory to a mature theory that attributed a greater role to beliefs. Findings supported a transition theory interpretation over competing interpretations. (MOK)

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2007.01.003 Byline: Connie M. Tang (a), Karen Bartsch (b), Narina Nunez (b) Keywords: Cognitive development; Metacognition; Knowledge acquisition; Source monitoring; Time understanding Abstract: This study investigated young children's reports of when learning occurred. A total of 96 4-, 5-, and 6-year-olds were recruited from suburban preschools and elementary schools. The children learned an animal fact and a body movement. A week later, children learned another animal fact and another body movement and then answered questions about when the different learning events occurred. Responses of children who responded correctly to control questions about time supported the hypothesis that temporal distance questions would elicit more correct responses than would temporal location questions. Partial support was also found for the hypothesis that behavior learning would generate more correct reports than would fact learning. Implications for characterizations of children's developing understanding of knowledge and for applications of those characterizations in education and eyewitness testimony are discussed. Author Affiliation: (a) Department of Psychology, Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, Pomona, NJ 08240, USA (b) Department of Psychology, University of Wyoming at Laramie, Laramie, WY 82071, USA Article History: Received 7 December 2006; Revised 16 January 2007

Whether and when children can apply their developing understanding of belief to persuasion was examined using interactive puppet tasks. Children selected 1 of 2 arguments to persuade a puppet to do something (e.g., pet a dog) after hearing the puppet's belief (e.g., 'I think puppies bite'). Across 2 studies, 132 children (ages 3-7 years) engaged in these persuasion tasks and in false-belief reasoning tasks, presented in puppet and story formats. Belief-relevant argument selection increased with age, as did appropriate reasoning about false beliefs, and occurred more in puppet than story tasks. Results suggest that improvements in belief reasoning in early childhood may be reflected in social interactions such as persuasion. Keywords: belief reasoning, perspective taking, persuasion, social cognition, theory of mind

Whether and how an understanding of biological explanation changes with development was explored in interviews with 24 first graders, 24 third graders, and 24 adults. Participants were asked about the changeability of biological and psychological characteristics and the causal mechanisms underlying biological, psychological, and mechanical phenomena (using both open-ended and forced-choice questions). In saying how characteristics might be changed, children and adults similarly distinguished between biology and psychology; they also responded similarly to questions about specific processes underlying biological change. Children's attributions of intention or agency to biological organs or body parts (i.e., vitalistic attribution) did not differ from adults', contrary to previous findings. The authors concluded that children's thinking about biology is not necessarily more vitalistic than adults'.

Investigated preschoolers' understanding of two distance principles: the direct-indirect and the same-plus principle. Children did better on tasks relevant to the principles than on principle-irrelevant tasks. Concluded that even young children conceive of distance as fixed intervals. (SKC)

Two studies investigated the attribution of action to beliefs and desires in 15 adults and 45 children. Children and adults shared a similar construal of human action in terms of beliefs, desires, and false beliefs. (RJC)

In this commentary we suggest that asymmetries in reasoning associated with moral judgment do not necessarily invalidate a theory theory account of naive psychological reasoning. The asymmetries may reflect a core knowledge assumption that human nature is prosocial, an assumption that heightens vigilance for antisocial dispositions, which in turn leads to differing assumptions about what is the presumed topic of conversation. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X10001688

Sunstein's characterization of moral blunders jointly indicts all intuitive process and the structure of heuristics. But intuitions need not lead to error, and the problems with moral heuristics apply also to moral principles. Accordingly, moral development may well involve more, rather than less, intuitive responsiveness. This suggests a novel trajectory for future research into the development of appropriate moral judgments.

Carpendale & Lewis's (C&L's) proposal of a social interaction account makes clear the need for researchers of all theoretical orientations to get specific about how social experience influences children's developing understanding of mind, but it is premature to reject other theories, such as theory-theory, which also attribute a major role to experience.

Developmental psychology should play an essential constraining role in developmental cognitive neuroscience. Theories of neural development must account explicitly for the early emergence of knowledge and abilities in infants and young children documented in developmental research. Especially in need of explanation at the neural level is the early emergence of meta-representation.