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This study explores the difficulties in physically realizing linguistic instructions concerning the action of jumping.We carried out a questionnaire on the understandability and physical feasibility of various jumping actions in Japanese, andthen conducted an experiment in which participants were asked to jump according to these instructions. After the physicalperformances the participants were asked to rate the easiness of the actions in a second questionnaire, and the results of thetwo questionnaires were compared. The results show that the understandability of the instructions and the participants’ beliefsabout the physical feasibility of the instructions were closely correlated. However, the results of the two questionnaires did notcorrelate. The results suggest that although participants believe they can convert jump instructions into physical performancesif the instructions are easy to understand, there are some gaps between the understandability of the linguistic instructions andthe physical realization of them.

This article explores the development of early word meanings in young children. The author challenges the assumption that early noun meanings are inherently specific object categories, proposing instead the "semantic pluripotency hypothesis." Through experiments with Japanese monolingual toddlers, the author finds that early object word meanings are initially undifferentiated events that later differentiate into specific objects. The study also suggests that the degree of semantic differentiation of object words is related to vocabulary growth of action words. These findings support the semantic pluripotency hypothesis and contribute to our understanding of early word learning. [Extracted from the article]

In the two‐alternative forced‐choice (2AFC) paradigm, manual responses such as pointing have been widely used as measures to estimate cognitive abilities. While pointing measurements can be easily collected, coded, analyzed, and interpreted, absent responses are often observed particularly when adopting these measures for toddler studies, which leads to an increase of missing data. Although looking responses such as preferential looking can be available as alternative measures in such cases, it is unknown how well looking measurements can be interpreted as equivalent to manual ones. This study aimed to answer this question by investigating how accurately pointing responses (i.e., left or right) could be predicted from concurrent preferential looking. Using pre‐existing videos of toddlers aged 18–23 months engaged in an intermodal word comprehension task, we developed models predicting manual from looking responses. Results showed substantial prediction accuracy for both the Simple Majority Vote and Machine Learning‐Based classifiers, which indicates that looking responses would be reasonable alternative measures of manual ones. However, the further exploratory analysis revealed that when applying the created models for data of toddlers who did not produce clear pointing responses, the estimation agreement of missing pointing between the models and the human coders slightly dropped. This indicates that looking responses without pointing were qualitatively different from those with pointing. Bridging two measurements in forced‐choice tasks would help researchers avoid wasting collected data due to the absence of manual responses and interpret results from different modalities comprehensively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We investigated how preschoolers understand the effects of forgiveness. • We focused on relational and emotional changes after forgiveness/unforgiveness. • Children can properly understand the functions of forgiveness by the age of 6. • Understanding of unforgiveness may be acquired later than that of forgiveness. Forgiveness plays an important role in restoring and maintaining cooperative relationships. Previous studies have demonstrated that young children could forgive transgressors both as a third party and as a victim. However, the research on young children's understanding of forgiveness is scant. This study focused on the two main functions of forgiveness—the restoration of a damaged relationship between the victim and the transgressor and the positive emotional change in the victim toward the transgressor. In this study, 48 4-year-olds (25 girls), 50 5-year-olds (21 girls), and 50 6-year-olds (21 girls) in Japan heard stories in which a victim either did or did not forgive a transgressor. They answered questions about the relationship between the victim and the transgressor and the victim's feelings toward the transgressor. Regarding the restoration of a damaged relationship, 4- to 6-year-olds understood that the restoration could occur in the presence of forgiveness. Yet, 6-year-olds showed more distinctive belief than 4- and 5-year-olds that the damaged relationship remains unrestored without forgiveness from the victim. For emotional changes, 6-year-olds understood that the forgiving victim would experience positive emotional changes, whereas the unforgiving victim would not. However, 4- and 5-year-olds expected positive emotional changes even without forgiveness, although they anticipated greater changes after forgiveness. The results show that the understanding of the important functions of forgiveness is present at 4 years of age and matures by 6 years of age. Children may develop a sophisticated understanding of the functions of forgiveness later than the actual forgiving behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]