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When deciding whether to trust someone's claims, how do children combine—over multiple interactions—information about that person's general behavioral tendencies (traits) with that person's ongoing (and changing) rate of providing accurate claims? Children aged 4–8 played 11 rounds of a find-the-sticker game. For each round, an informant looked into two cups and made a claim about which cup held a sticker. Children guessed the sticker's location and the sticker's actual location was revealed. Prior to the game, children received information that the informant was either honest or dishonest. In Study 1 (N = 201, 105 female, 96 male), the informant provided inaccurate information on the first five trials and then provided accurate information for the remaining trials (55% overall accuracy). In Study 2 (N = 144, 89 female, 55 male), the informant produced a less predictable pattern of (in)accuracy, but remained 55% accurate overall. The trait information children initially received about the informant's honesty strongly influenced their epistemic trust when they lacked additional information about the informant's reliability (the earliest trials). When children's first-hand experiences with the informant prevented them from making strong predictions about the informant's future behavior, only children approximately 7 years and older utilized trait information to guide their epistemic trust. These results demonstrate some similarities in children's causal reasoning about the physical world and their social reasoning. The results also demonstrate developmental patterns in how children weigh different types of social information at different junctures in social interaction. Public Significance Statement: When deciding whether to trust what someone told them, 4-year-olds relied on information about an informant's traits (honesty/dishonesty) when they had limited first-hand experience with that informant. By 7 years, children also relied on trait information when a person's future behavior was more nuanced or inconsistent with past behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For decades, developmental psychologists and educators have emphasized that learning about counterintuitive phenomena may be a critical driving force for cognitive development. Thus far, little is known about the specific content that children seek to enrich their knowledge. Using a novel book-choice paradigm, we directly examine children's preference to engage with media that contains more mundane vs. more counterintuitive content. Children ranging from 3- to 8-years (N = 174), from the U.S. and Canada, were presented with pairs of books about animals. The two books in each pair were visually identical aside from their printed title. One book in each pair was described as presenting a fact that (according to validation data on children's and adults' beliefs in these facts) was relatively intuitive, and the other book was described as presenting a fact that was relatively counterintuitive. The youngest participants (3–4 years) demonstrated no preference in selecting books with intuitive vs. counterintuitive facts about animals, whereas older children (5-years onward) demonstrated an increasing preference for counterintuitive content. Combined with validation data on children's and adults' intuitions about the focal facts, these data suggest that children's preference to seek information that adults deem counterintuitive (at least in the domain of biology) increases with age as a function of changes in the strength of children's intuitions about what is possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Societies are rife with out‐group discrimination and mistreatment. One way that children might acquire social biases that lead to such outcomes is by overhearing derogatory or disparaging comments about social groups. Children (n = 121) overheard a video call between a researcher and an adult or child caller who made negative claims (or no claims) about a novel social group. Immediately and following a 2‐week delay, older children (7–9 years) who overheard the message demonstrated stronger negative attitudes toward the group than children who heard no message. Younger children's (4‐ to 5‐year‐olds') attitudes were generally unaffected by these claims. Thus, overhearing brief, indirect messages from children or adults had robust and lasting effects on the social biases of children 7 years and older. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent proliferation of research on children's supernatural concepts is noteworthy, as this work is necessary for a full account of human cognition. Despite this advancement in our field, there is a lingering tendency for scholars to exotify supernatural concepts; to treat them as distinct or special. Arguments have been raised that these concepts are "prepared" to develop, even inherent; other arguments dismiss these ideas as "immature" or "childish." Yet, the empirical record documents that supernatural concepts are no more inherent and no more childish than "natural" concepts. Just like concepts of nature, supernatural concepts are constructed upon and constrained by one's existing conceptual architecture. I illustrate these points by drawing upon work on children's understanding of supernatural minds, like the minds of "omniscient" deities. This work reveals that young children have great difficulty in understanding such purported minds, but through a protracted developmental process children and adults may gradually approach an understanding of all-knowingness. Based on these and other data, I argue that constructivism makes possible some supernatural ideas that are typically not realized until late childhood or adulthood, contradicting both the view that supernatural concepts are inherent and the view that such concepts are "childish". As well, I emphasize that understanding how children develop beliefs in supernatural concepts requires understanding how they construct mental representations of those concepts. Embracing the fact that supernatural concepts develop through the same processes as concepts of nature will help to further bring research on these critical topics into the mainstream. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When we hear about a transgression, we may consider whether the perpetrator's individual circumstances make their transgression more understandable or excusable. Mitigating circumstances may reduce the severity of punishment that is deemed appropriate, both intuitively and legally. But importantly, in courts of public opinion and of law, mitigating information is typically presented only after information about a perpetrator's transgression. We explore whether this sequence influences the force of mitigating evidence. Specifically, in two studies, we examined whether presenting evidence about a perpetrator's background before or after evidence of their violation influenced how severely U.S. participants punished perpetrators. In Study 1 (N = 132), evidence about the perpetrator's mitigating circumstances reduced punishment only when it was presented before evidence about the perpetrator's violation. Study 2 (N = 316) additionally revealed this moderating effect of presentation order across a variety of premeditated and impulsive violations. These findings are consistent with person-centered theories of punishment and with the Story Model of adjudication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Individuals often develop negative biases toward unfamiliar or denigrated groups. Two experimental studies were conducted to investigate the extent to which brief negative messages about novel social groups influence children's (4- to 9-year-olds'; N = 153) intergroup attitudes. The studies examined the relative influence of messages that are provided directly to children versus messages that are overheard and examined whether the force of these messages varies with children's age. According to implicit and explicit measures of children's intergroup attitudes, children rapidly internalized messages demeaning novel groups, thus forming negative attitudes toward outgroups merely on the basis of hearsay. These effects were generally stronger among older children, and were particularly pronounced when the message was provided directly to children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children and adults appreciate that physical action is typically the conduit between individuals' desires and the fulfillment of those desires. However, certain forms of petitionary thought – e.g., wishing and praying – are believed by many people to influence the external world and fulfill desires without direct physical action. We examine whether children's and adults' predictions about the occurrence of desired events differs based on: (1) the ways in which desires are expressed (wishing vs. praying), (2) whether desired events are plausible vs. impossible, and (3) participants' religious backgrounds. Children ages 3- to 11-years (n = 144) and young adults (n = 85) were read scenarios in which a protagonist either wished or prayed for a desired event to occur. Some of the desired events could plausibly happen with ordinary human intervention and others were impossible, even with human intervention. Preschoolers often predicted that desired events would obtain; with increasing age, participants judged that fewer events would obtain. Participants' predictions varied by the probability of the desired event – across the entire age-range participants predicted that impossible events would obtain less often than plausible events. Thus, participants' everyday probabilistic reasoning was imported into their reasoning about the fulfillment of supernatural petitions. Children's and adults' religious experiences predicted their judgments that events would obtain if they had been prayed for, but not if they had been wished for. Thus, the effects of socio-cultural experience did not globally pervade children's and adults' probabilistic reasoning, but were specific to certain contexts about which they reasoned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evidence of perpetrators' biological or situational circumstances has been increasingly brought to bear in courtrooms. Yet, research findings are mixed as to whether this information influences folk evaluations of perpetrators' dispositions, and subsequently, evaluations of their deserved punishments. Previous research has not clearly dissociated the effects of information about perpetrators' genetic endowment versus their environmental circumstances. Additionally, most research has focused exclusively on violations involving extreme physical harm, often using mock capital sentences cases as examples. To address these gaps in the literature, we employed a "switched-at-birth" paradigm to investigate whether positive or negative information about perpetrators' genetic or environmental backgrounds influence evaluations of a perpetrator's mental states, character, and deserved punishment. Across three studies, we varied whether the transgression involved direct harm, an impure act that caused no harm, or a case of moral luck. The results indicate that negative genetic and environmental backgrounds influenced participants' evaluations of perpetrators' intentions, free will, and character, but did not influence participants' punishment decisions. Overall, these results replicate and extend existing findings suggesting that perpetrators' supposed extenuating circumstances may not mitigate the punishment that others assign to them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children's cognition is shaped, in part, by the messages provided by parents, educators, and peers. Some of these messages defy children's own knowledge or perceptions—these claims may be confronted regularly in science classes and museums (e.g., when learning about invisible gases or species categorization) and in religious settings (e.g., when learning about all‐powerful deities, souls, or qi). How are children's beliefs influenced by these countermessages? Using a constructivist framework, I review research to chart a developmental account for how children adjust their beliefs in response to counterintuitive and counterperceptual messages. I focus on how and why children's receptivity to such claims shifts across development, and I discuss cognitive and contextual factors that influence these developments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Five decades ago, Dmitry Belyaev, Lyudmila Trut, and colleagues began a now-famous experiment, selectively breeding foxes based on one criterion: perceived tame behavior. Over generations, the fox population changed in behavior (as predicted) but, intriguingly, also changed markedly in appearance—for example, many had wider mouths, curlier tails, different fur coloring, and floppy ears. These researchers concluded that the morphological changes that appeared in their foxes were a by-product of the researchers’ selecting for genetic variants that are implicated both in behavior and in appearance. For decades, scientists have largely accepted this “shared genetic variants” interpretation to fully account for the co-occurrence of behavioral and morphological phenotypes in these foxes and in other domesticated animals. However, several decades of psychological research on human social cognition, human-canine interaction, and canine behavior strongly suggest that such an account may be incomplete. I forward a supplementary perspective, based on psychological research, that the covariation of appearance and behavior among these foxes may be partly an artifact of human psychological processes at play in selection. These processes include humans’ tendency to infer individuals’ traits based on their physical features; trait inferences, in turn, influence how humans treat those individuals. If accurate, this account bears on our understanding of these famous foxes, human-canine interactions, as well as humans’ role in domestication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extending prior research on belief attributions, we investigated the extent to which 5‐ to 8‐year‐olds and adults distinguish their beliefs and other humans’ beliefs from God's beliefs. In Study 1, children reported that all agents held the same beliefs, whereas adults drew greater distinctions among agents. For example, adults reported that God was less likely than humans to view behaviors as morally acceptable. Study 2 additionally investigated attributions of beliefs about controversial behaviours (e.g., telling prosocial lies) and belief stability. These data replicated the main results from Study 1 and additionally revealed that adults (but not children) reported that God was less likely than any other agent to think that controversial behaviours were morally acceptable. Furthermore, across ages, participants reported that another person's beliefs were more likely to change than either God's beliefs or their own beliefs. We discuss implications for theories regarding belief attributions and for religious and moral cognition. Statement of contribution What is already known on this subject Preschoolers can attribute different beliefs to different humans Children and adults attribute greater cognitive capacities to God than to humans What the present study adds Children attribute the same moral beliefs to God and humans Adults distinguish among different agents’ minds when attributing moral beliefs Developmental differences are less pronounced in judgements of belief stability [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children (3.5-8.5 years; n = 105) heard claims about the occurrence of improbable or impossible events, then were asked whether the events could really happen. Some claims were based on informants' first-hand observations and others were hearsay. A baseline group (n = 56) reported their beliefs about these events without hearing testimony. Neither first-hand claims nor hearsay influenced beliefs about impossible events, which remained low across the age range. Hearsay (but not first-hand claims) did influence beliefs about improbable events. Preschoolers expressed greater belief following hearsay, compared to their beliefs following first-hand claims and compared to the baseline group's beliefs. By contrast, older children expressed less belief following hearsay, compared to their beliefs following first-hand claims and compared to the baseline group's beliefs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children aged 4-7 years (N = 120) played four rounds of a find-the-sticker game. For each round, an informant looked into two cups and made a claim about which cup held a sticker. At the end of each round, children guessed the sticker's location, and then the sticker's actual location was revealed. For three of the rounds, the informant accurately reported the sticker's location. But critically, for one round-either Round 1, 2, or 3-she was inaccurate. Children continually adjusted their trust in the informant as they obtained more information about her accuracy. Relations between the informant's pattern of accuracy and children's trust were robust, neither mediated nor moderated by children inferences about her intent or traits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When preschoolers are presented with a label for an entity that conflicts with its appearance, they sometimes rely on the new label rather than on the entity’s appearance to categorize the entity and to infer its properties. We examined whether children’s learning from such claims is short-lived or long-lasting and whether the persistence of their learning depends on the degree of fit between those claims and the available perceptual evidence. Children aged 3–5 years ( N = 71) were asked to categorize hybrids. These hybrids combined 75% of the features from one animal or object with 25% of the features from a different animal or object. After categorizing each hybrid, children heard an informant provide a contrary label. Immediately after they were provided with this new label, children often recategorized the entities accordingly, especially when the label matched the hybrid’s predominant features. Children’s endorsement of the informant’s label proved to be long-lasting when it matched the hybrid’s predominant features, typically persisting even after 5 weeks. In contrast, children’s endorsement often faded over time when the informant’s label did not match the hybrid’s predominant features. Overall, children were more skeptical of testimony that was more discrepant with the perceptual evidence available to them, and they were less likely to continue endorsing it after a delay. The findings have implications for our understanding of how children eventually come to represent and believe in counter-perceptual and counterintuitive concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In two studies, we investigated the development of children’s reasoning about potent invisible entities. In Study 1, children aged 2.2–5.5 years ( N = 48) were briefly told about a novel invisible substance that could produce a novel outcome—make a novel box turn green. During this introduction, children watched as one container was inverted over a box and the box lit up green, and then another identical container was inverted over the box and the box did not light up. On test trials, the experimenter inserted a spoon in novel (actually empty) containers and inverted the spoon over the box, which turned green in one trial and did not light up in the other trial. For both trials, children were asked whether there was anything in each container. Children across this age range appropriately reported that an invisible substance was present only when the box lit up. In Study 2, children aged 2.4–4.5 years ( N = 48) watched similar demonstrations but were not explicitly provided information about the invisible substance. Children as young as 3 years spontaneously inferred that an invisible substance was present when the box lit up and was absent when the box did not light up. A final task tested children’s ability to use their causal knowledge of invisible substances to produce an effect—making the box light up. The youngest children had difficulty with this task, but many children aged 3.5–4.5 years performed capably. These results indicate an early-emerging understanding of potent invisible entities that develops rapidly during early childhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children ranging from 4 to 8years (n=39) reported whether they could imagine various improbable phenomena (e.g., a person making onion juice) as well as various impossible phenomena (e.g., a person turning an onion into a banana) and then described what they imagined. In their descriptions, children mentioned ordinary causes much more often than extraordinary causes. Descriptions of such ordinary causes were provided more often in relation to improbable (rather than impossible) phenomena. Following these imaginative efforts, children judged if each phenomenon could really happen. To check whether these reality judgments were affected by children's attempts to imagine, a control group (n=39) made identical reality judgments but were not first prompted to imagine each phenomenon. Children across the age range judged that impossible phenomena cannot really happen but, with increasing age, judged that improbable phenomena can happen. This pattern emerged in both the imagination and control groups; thus simply prompting children to imagine did not alter their reality judgments. However, within the imagination group, judgments that phenomena can really happen were associated with children's claims to have successfully imagined the phenomena and with certain characteristics of their descriptions: imagining ordinary causes and imagining phenomena obtain. Results highlight close links between imagination and reality judgments in childhood. Contrary to the notion that young children have a rich imagination that readily defies reality, results indicate that their imagination is grounded in reality, as are their beliefs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine how understandings of ordinary and extraordinary communication develop. Three- to 10-year-old children and adults (N = 183) were given scenarios in which a protagonist wanted help from a human (their parent) or from God. Scenarios varied in whether protagonists expressed their desires aloud (by asking) or silently (by hoping), whether (for human scenarios) parents were nearby or far away, and whether (for God scenarios) protagonists expressed desires through ordinary means (asking or hoping) or more extraordinary means (praying). Following each scenario, participants were asked whether the recipient (either the parent or God) was aware of the protagonist's desire. Children as young as 3 to 4 years old understood that both loudness and distance limit the effectiveness of human communication, reporting that humans would most likely be aware of desires when they were expressed both aloud and nearby. As well, by this age children reported that God would more often be aware of desires than would humans, but children of all ages often reported that God (like humans) would be more aware of desires expressed aloud (rather than silently). These concepts of ordinary and extraordinary communication continued to be refined through middle childhood. Children's performance on standard theory-of-mind tasks and participants' religious background predicted whether they attributed awareness to God. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For centuries, humans have contemplated the minds of gods. Research on religious cognition is spread across sub-disciplines, making it difficult to gain a complete understanding of how people reason about gods' minds. We integrate approaches from cognitive, developmental, and social psychology and neuroscience to illuminate the origins of religious cognition. First, we show that although adults explicitly discriminate supernatural minds from human minds, their implicit responses reveal far less discrimination. Next, we demonstrate that children's religious cognition often matches adults' implicit responses, revealing anthropomorphic notions of God's mind. Together, data from children and adults suggest the intuitive nature of perceiving God's mind as human-like. We then propose three complementary explanations for why anthropomorphism persists in adulthood, suggesting that anthropomorphism may be (a) an instance of the anchoring and adjustment heuristic; (b) a reflection of early testimony; and/or (c) an evolutionary byproduct. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children and adults from the us (Study 1) and China (Study 2) heard about people who died in two types of narrative contexts - medical and religious - and judged whether their psychological and biological capacities cease or persist after death. Most 5- to 6-year-olds reported that all capacities would cease. In the us, but not China, there was an increase in persistence judgments at 7-8 years, which decreased thereafter, us children's persistence judgments were influenced by narrative context - occurring more often for religious narratives - and such judgments were made especially for psychological capacities. When participants were simply asked what happens to people following death, in both countries there were age-graded increases in references to burial, religious ritual, and the supernatural. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined how children's intuitions and informants' expertise influence children's trust in informants' claims. Three- to 8-year-olds ( N = 192) watched videos in which experts (animal/biology experts or artifact/physics experts) made either intuitively plausible or counterintuitive claims about obscure animals or artifacts. Claims fell either within or beyond experts' domains of expertise. Children of all ages were more trusting of claims made by informants with relevant, as opposed to irrelevant, expertise. Children also showed greater acceptance of intuitive rather than counterintuitive claims, a differentiation that increased with age as they developed firmer intuitions about what can ordinarily happen. In summary, children's trust in testimony depends on whether informants have the relevant expertise as well as on children's own developing intuitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Individuals in many cultures believe in omniscient (all-knowing) beings, but everyday representations of omniscience have rarely been studied. To understand the nature of such representations requires knowing how they develop. Two studies examined the breadth of knowledge (i.e., types of knowledge) and depth of knowledge (i.e., amount of knowledge within domains) that preschoolers, elementary-school children, and adults (N = 180) attributed to an all-knowing being. Preschoolers often reported that an omniscient mind would lack many types of knowledge, and they completely failed to understand the depth of omniscient knowledge. With increasing age, children approached an understanding of omniscience—attributing broader and deeper knowledge to an omniscient agent—but only adults firmly understood the depth of omniscient knowledge. We identify socio-cultural and cognitive factors that correlate with children’s understandings of omniscience. Findings demonstrate that childhood representations of fallible, limited, human minds both make possible and constrain developing representations of radically non-human minds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children and adults often encounter counterintuitive claims that defy their perceptions. We examined factors that influence children's acceptance of such claims. Children ages 3-6 years were shown familiar objects (e.g.. a rock), were asked to identify the objects, and were then told that each object was something else (e.g., that the rock was soap). For some children, informants explicitly stated that the objects were different from what they appeared to be, whereas other children received testimony about the objects' identities without any reference to the discrepancy between appearance and reality. Children also completed standard tasks measuring appearance-reality understanding. When later asked about the objects' identities and properties, children who had a firm understanding of the appearance-reality distinction and those who heard informants mention that distinction were more accepting of the informants' counterintuitive claims. Thus, receptivity to counterintuitive claims can reflect conceptual growth rather than simple deference or conformity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research shows that even preschoolers are skeptical; they frequently reject claims from other people when the claims conflict with their own perceptions and concepts. Yet, despite their skepticism, both children and adults come to believe in a variety of phenomena that defy their first-hand perceptions and intuitive conceptions of the world. In this review, we explore how children and adults acquire such concepts. We describe how a similar developmental process underlies mental representation of both the natural and the supernatural world, and we detail this process for two prominent supernatural counterintuitive ideas—God and the afterlife. In doing so, we highlight the fact that conceptual development does not always move in the direction of greater empirical truth, as described within naturalistic domains. We consider factors that likely help overcome skepticism and, in doing so, promote belief in counterintuitive phenomena. These factors include qualities of the learners, aspects of the context, qualities of the informants, and qualities of the information. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This prospective longitudinal study provides evidence of preschool-age precursors of hostile attribution bias in young school-age children, a topic that has received little empirical attention. We examined multiple risk domains, including laboratory and observational assessments of children's social-cognition, general cognitive functioning, effortful control, and peer aggression. Preschoolers {N = 231) with a more advanced theory-of-mind, better emotion understanding, and higher IQ made fewer hostile attributions of intent in the early school years. Further exploration of these significant predictors revealed that only certain components of these capacities (i.e., nonstereotypical emotion understanding, false-belief explanation, and verbal IQ) were robust predictors of a hostile attribution bias in young school-age children and were especially strong predictors among children with more advanced effortful control. These relations were prospective in nature-the effects of preschool variables persisted after accounting for similar variables at school age. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for future research and prevention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined how informants' traits affect how children seek information, trust testimony, and make inferences about informants' knowledge. Eighty-one 3- to 6-year-olds and 26 adults completed tasks where they requested and endorsed information provided by one of two informants with conflicting traits (e.g., honesty vs. dishonesty). Participants also completed tasks where they simultaneously considered informants' traits and visual access to information when inferring their knowledge and trusting their testimony. Children and adults preferred to ask and endorse information provided by people who are nice, smart, and honest. Moreover, these traits influenced the knowledge that young children attributed to informants. Children younger than 5 years of age reported that people with positive traits were knowledgeable even when they lacked access to relevant information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emotional reactivity hypothesis holds that, over the course of phylogeny, the selection of animals with less reactive temperaments supported the development of sophisticated social-cognitive skills in several species, including humans (Hare, 2007). In the ontogenetic human case, an emotional reactivity hypothesis predicts that children with less reactive temperaments will reach certain milestones in theory-of-mind (ToM) development more quickly. We examined relations between temperament and false-belief understanding in 102 preschool-age children from China and the United States. Temperament was measured via parental ratings of behavior as well as with physiological measures of children's reactivity (hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical axis reactivity gauged via salivary cortisol). In accord with an emotional reactivity hypothesis, children with certain reactive temperaments-specifically, those who were more aggressive and those who were both socially withdrawn and physiologically reactive- evidenced poorer social-cognition. However, our findings also force amendment to the ontogenetic emotional reactivity hypothesis. For the majority of children in both countries, physiological reactivity predicted more advanced ToM, perhaps by facilitating social engagement and attention to social stimuli. Moreover, children who were withdrawn from social interaction yet nonreactive, especially Chinese children of this temperament, evidenced advanced ToM. Thus, some forms of social disengagement may foster social-cognitive development in certain sociocultural contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the ubiquitous use of anthropomorphic language to describe biological change in both educational settings and popular science, little is known about how anthropomorphic language influences children's understanding of evolutionary concepts. In an experimental study, we assessed whether the language used to convey evolutionary concepts influences children's (5- to 12-year-olds; N = 88) understanding of evolutionary change. Language was manipulated by using three types of narrative, each describing animals' biological change: (a) need-based narratives, which referenced animals' basic survival needs; (b) desire-based or anthropomorphic narratives, which referenced animals' mental states; and (c) scientifically accurate natural selection narratives. Results indicate that the language used to describe evolutionary change influenced children's endorsement of and use of evolutionary concepts when interpreting that change. Narratives using anthropomorphic language were least likely to facilitate a scientifically accurate interpretation. In contrast, need-based and natural selection language had similar and positive effects, which suggests that need-based reasoning might provide a conceptual scaffold to an evolutionary explanation of biological origins. In sum, the language used to teach evolutionary change impacts conceptual understanding in children and has important pedagogical implications for science education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three- to 5-year-old ( N = 61) religiously schooled preschoolers received theory-of-mind (ToM) tasks about the mental states of ordinary humans and agents with exceptional perceptual or mental capacities. Consistent with an anthropomorphism hypothesis, children beginning to appreciate limitations of human minds (e.g., ignorance) attributed those limits to God. Only 5-year-olds differentiated between humans' fallible minds and God's less fallible mind. Unlike secularly schooled children, religiously schooled 4-year-olds did appreciate another agent's less fallible mental abilities when instructed and reminded about those abilities. Among children who understood ordinary humans' mental fallibilities, knowledge of God predicted attributions of correct epistemic states to extraordinary agents. Results suggest that, at a certain point in ToM development, sociocultural input can facilitate an appreciation for extraordinary minds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Almost half of the US public rejects the idea that humans originated via evolution rather than by supernatural design. Moreover, studies demonstrate that even biology teachers have difficulty teaching their students about evolution, often including creationist explanations as well. A typical response to such findings is the argument that greater exposure to evolutionary theory would eliminate these unscientific alternatives. However, creationist ideas are not easily extinguished. Even after repeated exposure to evolutionary concepts, creationist ideas are more likely to be incorporated into hybrid frameworks along with evolutionary ideas, rather than completely rejected. Thus, members of the public often find these ideas complementary rather than contradictory. In this review, we apply dual-process theory to examine individuals' understandings of the origins of species. We describe cognitive biases that operate at the intuitive-autonomous level (system 1), some of which, we argue, anchor belief in supernatural design, and others of which potentially anchor evolutionary ideas. At the other end of the continuum, reflective and abstract reasoning (system 2) processes are apparent in both scientific and theological explanations of origins. We conclude that presenting supernatural and natural explanations of biological origins as contradictory belies the way they function in everyday reasoning. By understanding the theological and the scientific arguments as well as the way most people intuitively reason about such existential questions, teachers might be better prepared to deal with these issues in the classroom. Copyright © 2011 S. Karger AG, Basel [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Temperament dimensions influence children's approach to and participation in social interactive experiences which reflect and impact children's social understandings. Therefore, temperament differences might substantially impact theory-of-mind development in early childhood. Using longitudinal data, we report that certain early temperament characteristics (at age 3) - lack of aggressiveness, a shy-withdrawn stance to social interaction, and social-perceptual sensitivity - predict children's more advanced theory-of-mind understanding 2 years later. The findings contribute to our understanding of how theory of mind develops in the formative preschool period; they may also inform debates as to the evolutionary origins of theory of mind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study utilized longitudinal data to investigate how theory of mind (ToM) and emotion understanding (EU) concurrently and prospectively predicted young children's moral reasoning and decision making. One hundred twenty-eight children were assessed on measures of ToM and EU at 3.5 and 5.5 years of age. At 5.5 years, children were also assessed on the quality of moral reasoning and decision making they used to negotiate prosocial moral dilemmas, in which the needs of a story protagonist conflict with the needs of another story character. More sophisticated EU predicted greater use of physical- and material-needs reasoning, and a more advanced ToM predicted greater use of psychological-needs reasoning. Most intriguing, ToM and EU jointly predicted greater use of higher-level acceptance-authority reasoning, which is likely a product of children's increasing appreciation for the knowledge held by trusted adults and children's desire to behave in accordance with social expectations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How and when do children develop an understanding of extraordinary mental capacities? The current study tested 56 preschoolers on false-belief and knowledge-ignorance tasks about the mental states of contrasting agents-some agents were ordinary humans, some had exceptional perceptual capacities, and others possessed extraordinary mental capacities. Results indicated that, in contrast to younger and older peers, children within a specific age range reliably attributed fallible, human-like capacities to ordinary humans and to several special agents (including God) for both tasks. These data lend critical support to an anthropomorphism hypothesis-which holds that children's understanding of extraordinary minds is derived from their everyday intuitive psychology-and reconcile disparities between the findings of other studies on children's understanding of extraordinary minds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Social experiences are critical to children's theory-of-mind (ToM) development. • Children vary in how they to attend to, shape, and engage in social experiences. • We integrate research establishing links between children's social tendencies and ToM. • Findings inform debates on the ways in which social experiences might influence ToM. • We conclude with suggestions for continued research on these topics. A wealth of research and theorizing has been dedicated to the idea that children's theory of mind (ToM) development is contingent upon qualities of their social contexts (e.g., parents' mental-state language use, the presence of siblings). We highlight the importance of considering the child as an active observer and participant in these social contexts, and thus an agent in their own ToM development. Drawing on research and theory that emphasizes the child's active role in ToM development, we identify child-level social factors that may be critical in explaining individual differences in this development. Specifically, we focus on variability in children's 'social tendencies'—how they attend to social contexts, and how they interact within and shape those contexts. These tendencies may influence the social information that children garner from social contexts—information that they use to construct a ToM. We review and integrate a growing body of research that has established empirical links between individual differences in children's ToM and their social tendencies—specifically, factors such as their social attentiveness, shyness, anxious-withdrawal, and aggressiveness. Taken together, these findings inform continued debates on whether and how social contexts and children's participation in those contexts influence children's ToM, particularly with regard to how children construct their ToM. We conclude with suggestions for continued research on these topics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Children heard claims based on second-hand oral testimony or text-based sources. • Younger children showed greater belief in claims based on hearsay than older children. • Younger children were more skeptical of claims that referenced the internet. • Children's belief in testimony depends on where the information originates. Children aged 4.75–8.50 years (n = 127) heard testimony about improbable or impossible events—referencing either spoken hearsay, a book, or the internet—and judged whether the events could occur in reality. A separate baseline group (n = 48) judged the events without hearing testimony. Relative to baseline, younger children (4 and 5 years) reported greater belief that improbable events could occur when testimony referenced hearsay and less belief when testimony referenced the internet. In contrast, older children (8 years) were less likely to believe improbable events could occur when testimony referenced hearsay and believed testimony that referenced a text-based source (a book or the internet) at rates similar to baseline. Beliefs about the occurrence of impossible events were similar (and low) across ages and testimony conditions. Implications for children's learning from spoken and text-based sources are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We examined children's and adults' trust in and impressions of inaccurate informants. • Children quickly distrusted the informant's claims. Adults' distrust was more gradual. • Children's ratings of the informant were relatively stable and clustered together. • Adult's ratings did not cluster in the same manner and were more malleable. As children and adults interact with new individuals, they make and revise inferences about these individuals' traits and intentions; they build and refine psychological profiles. Here, we examined how this ability develops during early childhood and manifests during adulthood by focusing on the construction of psychological profiles for individuals who have repeatedly provided inaccurate information. Children aged 4–7 years (n = 66) and adults (n = 62) played six rounds of a game in which they needed to find a hidden sticker. In each round, an informant made a claim about the sticker's location, and then participants guessed the sticker's location. In each round, after participants guessed, it was revealed that the informant's claim was incorrect. Across trials, children and adults quickly lost trust in the informant's claims. Children's impressions of the informant's smartness, niceness, and intentions became slightly more negative across trials. In contrast, adults' impressions of the informant's smartness increased, whereas their impressions of the informant's niceness decreased, and adults nearly unanimously judged the informant to be purposely (rather than mistakenly) inaccurate. In sum, children and adults track the accuracy of an informant over time and use this information to update their epistemic trust in the informant. However, based on the same data, children and adults end up with different interpretations of the informant's psychological characteristics—her traits and intentions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young children, unlike adults, deny that improbable events can happen. We test two accounts explaining this developmental shift. The development= reflection account posits that this shift is driven by an emerging ability to reflect on modal intuitions. In contrast, the development= intuition account posits that this shift is driven by changes in modal intuitions themselves, due to age-related changes in what people knowand how they sample their knowledge andmemories. These accountsmake competing predictions about howlong children and adults should take tomake possibility judgments. In Experiment 1, we asked 123 children (39 5-year-olds, 42 7-year-olds, 42 9-year-olds; 49.60% White) and 40 adults (50% White) to judge the possibility of 78 ordinary, improbable, and impossible events and recorded their response times. In Experiment 2, we tested an additional 52 adults (42.32% White) who were under speeded conditions and thus less able to reflect before responding. Our results favor the development=intuition account. At all ages, people judged improbable eventsmore slowly than ordinary or impossible events, and slow responding did not consistently predict affirmation over denial. Further, adults' possibility judgments did not change under speeded conditions. We also fit a drift-diffusion model to our data, which suggested that adults and children may sample different kinds of knowledge when generating intuitions. Our findings suggest that possibility judgments are often driven bymodal intuitions with little reflection, and that a developmental shift in what children know and how knowledge is retrieved can explain why these intuitions change over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the United States, God is commonly conceptualized as the omnipotent and omniscient entity that created the universe, and as a White man. We questioned whether the extent to which God is conceptualized as a White man predicts the extent to which White men are perceived as particularly fit for leadership. We found support for this across 7 studies. In Study 1, we created 2 measures to examine the extent to which U.S. Christians conceptualized God as a White man, and in Study 2 we found that, controlling for multiple covariates (e.g., racist and sexist attitudes, religiosity, political attitudes), responses on these measures predicted perceiving White male job candidates as particularly fit for leadership, among both Black and White, male and female, Christians. In Study 3, we found that U.S. Christian children, both White and racial minority, conceptualized God as more White than Black (and more male than female), which predicted perceiving White people as particularly boss-like. We next found evidence to suggest that this phenomenon is rooted in broader intuitions that extend beyond Christianity. That is, in a novel context with novel groups and a novel god, U.S. Christian adults (Studies 4 and 6), atheist adults (Study 5), and agnostic preschoolers (Study 7), used a god's identity to infer which groups were best fit for leadership. Collectively, our data reveal a clear and consistent pattern: Attributing a social identity to God predicts perceiving individuals who share that identity as more fit for leadership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: The mandibular anterior can be a challenging anatomic location for achieving root coverage irrespective of the selected graft and surgical technique. The epithelialized palatal graft (EPG), often dismissed in deference to esthetic and patient‐centered considerations, is well‐suited for treating gingival recession in this region. Although a considerable volume of data exists assessing root coverage procedure outcomes, little evidence supports superiority of any one technique specifically applied to the mandibular anterior. Case Presentation: Two periodontally and systemically healthy patients with multiple adjacent Class I and III recession defects in the mandibular anterior were treated with EPG. Recipient site dimensions in one case obligated bilateral palatal donor sites. In this case, the two autogenous grafts were carefully sutured extraorally before placement. Favorable increases in attached gingival dimensions and partial or complete root coverage were noted after 12‐ or 18‐month follow‐up periods. In the case requiring bilateral donor sites, no transition between the two grafts could be appreciated after healing. Conclusions: Overall, subepithelial connective tissue graft (SCTG)‐based techniques reportedly produce higher mean root coverage percentages and more frequent complete root coverage compared with EPG. However, when observations are limited to the mandibular anterior, there are insufficient data to conclude SCTG is superior to EPG. In the presented cases, EPG at multiple adjacent mandibular anterior recession defects produced favorable clinical outcomes. Extraoral suturing of bilaterally harvested grafts facilitated graft stabilization and minimized irregularities in gingival architecture after healing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A developmental cascade model was tested to examine longitudinal associations among firstborn children's aggression, theory of mind (ToM), and antagonism toward their younger sibling during the 1st year of siblinghood. Aggression and ToM were assessed before the birth of a sibling and 4 and 12 months after the birth, and antagonism was examined at 4 and 12 months in a sample of 208 firstborn children (initial Mage  = 30 months, 56% girls) from primarily European American, middle-class families. Firstborns' aggression consistently predicted high sibling antagonism both directly and through poorer ToM. Results highlight the importance of examining longitudinal influences across behavioral, social-cognitive, and relational factors that are closely intertwined even from the early years of life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• People with disabilities are often judged for non-normative behavior they can't control. • Children 4.5 years and older accounted for the role of disability in persons' non-normative behavior. • Children as young as 4 years of age mentioned physical or auditory limitations in their reasoning for the non-normative behavior of people with disabilities. • Children are aware of and capable of learning about disability concepts in the preschool years. People with disabilities may behave in non-normative ways because they cannot act otherwise. This study explored whether U.S. children aged 3.00 to 8.99 years (N = 105) differ in their evaluations of people who commit norm violations when those persons have perceptual or physical disabilities. Across 12 scenarios, children were asked to explain different characters' non-normative behaviors and to evaluate each character's naughtiness. Characters were typically developing, had a physical disability, or had a hearing disability. Disabilities were described to participants but were not visually depicted. Across moral and conventional norm violations, children aged 4.5 years and older judged characters with disabilities as less naughty than characters without disabilities, whereas younger children (3 and 4 years) judged all characters as equally naughty. Children's explanations for characters' non-normative behaviors (acknowledging characters' physical/auditory limitations and inferring negative attributes) significantly predicted their naughtiness judgments; this was true for participants across the sampled age range. Thus, preschool children demonstrated flexibility in their moral judgments across a variety of everyday behavioral violations, tempering their negative evaluations of persons who committed non-normative behaviors when those persons had unseen disabilities that could reasonably account for their actions. Parents and teachers may be able to build on these early moral intuitions to foster greater acceptance of persons with disabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children's inferences about people's knowledge and epistemic trustworthiness can be swayed by seemingly unimportant qualities, such as their personality traits or appearance. Very little is known about how children reason about the minds and statements of persons with disabilities. In this study, we examined children's inferences about the knowledge and epistemic trustworthiness of people with physical or auditory disabilities; disabilities that had no actual bearing on the quality of their visually-derived knowledge or claims. U.S. children ages 3.00–6.99 years (N = 76) were presented with scenarios in which a character who was disabled looked inside a box and another character who was typically-developing simply held that same box (without looking inside). Children were asked who knew what was inside the box. Then, the two characters made contrasting claims about what object the box contained, and children were asked to endorse one of the characters' claims. Regardless of characters' abilities, children across the age-range were significantly more likely to attribute knowledge to characters who had seen inside the boxes. This pattern was found even among the youngest participants (3-year-olds), and became more pronounced with age. As well, across the entire age range, children's trust in informants' claims did not differ depending upon characters' disabilities. By 4.5 years, children preferred claims provided by characters who had seen the boxes' contents, and this pattern, too, became more pronounced with age. Thus, children's attributions of knowledge and trustworthiness to persons were not swayed if they possessed an irrelevant physical or perceptual disability. • Children 3–6 years evaluated persons' knowledge and epistemic trustworthiness. • Some persons were typically-abled; others had irrelevant disabilities. • Children's knowledge attributions were unswayed by persons' disability status alone. • Children's epistemic trust was unswayed by persons' disability status alone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: The epithelialized palatal graft (EPG), introduced in 1963, has persisted as the gold standard for gingival augmentation, and in the present era, mucosal augmentation around dental implants has become an important concern. A limited body of evidence suggests peri‐implant mucosal augmentation may favorably impact bone and mucosal stability and peri‐implant health under some circumstances. Although more contemporary procedures for peri‐implant mucosal augmentation are often preferred based on convenience and esthetic considerations, EPG augmentation at dental implant sites is distinguishable from methods which do not deepen the vestibule and eliminate unfavorable superficial soft tissue. Implant sites augmented with EPG are qualitatively distinct from sites augmented using other methods. Case Series: Seven generally healthy patients received EPG augmentation before dental implant placement, at implant placement, before implant uncovering, or after implant uncovering. In each case, the patient exhibited a favorable zone of attached peri‐implant mucosa following treatment. Conclusions: Reliable mucosal augmentation with EPG is achievable at multiple phases in the course of dental implant therapy. EPG augmentation offers distinct clinical advantages and may be preferable to other mucosal augmentation strategies at some dental implant sites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using an alkaline phosphatase-based genetic screening method, we identified a number of proteins that are potentially located on the outer surface of Group B streptococcus (Streptococcus agalactiae). In an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, antisera raised against two of the proteins, the streptococcal yutD homologue and a subunit of an ABC transporter, recognised clinically important serotypes of Group B streptococcus. In a neonatal rat model, purified IgG from the sera conferred significant levels of protection against a lethal challenge infection. The proteins identified show potential as protein subunit candidates for vaccines against Group B streptococcal disease in neonates. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]