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Despite having been relegated to the realm of superstition during the dominant years of behaviourism, the investigation and discussion of consciousness has again become scientifically defensible. However, attempts at describing animal consciousness continue to be criticised for lacking independent criteria that identify the presence or absence of the phenomenon. Over one hundred years ago William James recognised that mental traits are subject to the same evolutionary processes as are physical characteristics and must therefore be represented in differing levels of complexity throughout the animal kingdom. James's proposals with regard to animal consciousness are outlined and followed by a discussion of three classes of animal consciousness derived from empirical research. These classes are presented to defend both James's proposals and the position that a theory of animal consciousness can be scientifically supported. It is argued that by using particular behavioural expressions to index consciousness and by providing empirical tests by which to elicit these behavioural expressions a scientifically defensible theory of animal consciousness can be developed.

In industrialized societies, adults exhibit stable preferences for the types of people, animals, and entities they feel moral concern for (Crimston et al., 2016). Only one published study to date has utilized the moral circles paradigm to examine these preferences in children, finding that as children age, their preferences shift to become more similar to adults' (Neldner et al., 2018). However, it is currently unclear whether children's conceptualization of moral concern differs from that of other related social constructs. The aim of the current study was twofold: first, to test the moral circles paradigm in a new sample of children to see whether published patterns of moral concern could be replicated and, second, to investigate whether children distinguish moral concern from the related constructs of liking and familiarity. Australian children aged 4 to 10 years old (N = 281; 143 boys, 138 girls; predominantly middle class) placed 24 pictures of human, animal, and environmental entities on a stratified circle according to how much they cared, liked, or knew about the targets. We found similar patterns of moral prioritization to previous research (Neldner et al., 2018), replicating both stable preferences and age-related changes in children's moral concern for others. Crucially, we extend these findings by showing that children distinguish how much they care about entities from their levels of liking and knowing about them. This suggests children differentiate between moral concern and other social constructs early in development and display distinct patterns of prioritization when evaluating everyday entities according to these judgments.

Empirical findings and theorizations of both imitation and selective trust offer different views on and interpretations of children's social learning mechanisms. The imitation literature provides ample documentation of children's behavioural patterns in the acquisition of socially appropriate norms and practices. The selective trust literature provides insights into children's cognitive processes of choosing credible informants and what information to learn in future interactions. In this paper, we place together findings from both fields and note that they share analogically similar theoretical underpinnings and offer explanations that are complementary to each other. We contend that children's imitative tendency may be due to their selection of in-group members as "cultural experts," who serve as reliable sources of conventional information. Moving forward, we note the importance of evaluating individual differences and cultural factors to provide a more holistic understanding of universality and variation in children's social learning mechanisms.

Self-regulation is a widely studied construct, generally assumed to be cognitively supported by executive functions (EFs). There is a lack of clarity and consensus over the roles of specific components of EFs in self-regulation. The current study examines the relations between performance on (a) a self-regulation task (Heads, Toes, Knees Shoulders Task) and (b) two EF tasks (Knox Cube and Beads Tasks) that measure different components of updating: working memory and short-term memory, respectively. We compared 107 8- to 13-year-old children (64 females) across demographically-diverse populations in four low and middle-income countries, including: Tanna, Vanuatu; Keningau, Malaysia; Saltpond, Ghana; and Natal, Brazil. The communities we studied vary in market integration/urbanicity as well as level of access, structure, and quality of schooling. We found that performance on the visuospatial working memory task (Knox Cube) and the visuospatial short-term memory task (Beads) are each independently associated with performance on the self-regulation task, even when controlling for schooling and location effects. These effects were robust across demographically-diverse populations of children in low-and middle-income countries. We conclude that this study found evidence supporting visuospatial working memory and visuospatial short-term memory as distinct cognitive processes which each support the development of self-regulation.

Studies show teaching assistants (TAs) can positively influence the learning environment by increasing student comprehension and retention and impacting students' choices of academic and career paths. However, use of TAs in higher education is not universal. Following a fruitful panel discussion at the 2017 HAPS Conference, we conducted a survey to assess the prevalence of undergraduate and graduate TAs in human anatomy and physiology courses across a range of institutions and to evaluate how TAs are recruited, trained and compensated. Data from 329 respondents who used TAs, indicate most institutions use a formal application process, training procedures vary, and most TAs are compensated financially through hourly wages, stipends, or tuition credit. However, some TAs are unpaid but receive course credit as compensation. We highlight one of the more successful recruiting and training programs, where paid master TAs mentor unpaid apprentice TAs. This tiered training program excites and motivates student leadership, maintains high academic standards, and alleviates the lead instructor from continually training novice TAs.

Commensurate with constant technological advances, social robots are increasingly anticipated to enter homes and classrooms; however, little is known about the efficacy of social robots as teaching tools. To investigate children's learning from robots, 1- to 3-year-olds observed either a human or a robot demonstrate two goal-directed object manipulation tasks and were then given the opportunity to act on the objects. Children exhibited less imitation from robotic models that varied with task complexity and age, a phenomenon we term the "robot deficit." In addition, the more children engaged with the robot prior to administration of the imitation task, the more likely they were to replicate the robot's actions. These findings document how children are able to learn from robots but that ongoing design of robotic platforms needs to be oriented to developing more socially engaging means of interacting.

Prior research suggests that human children lack an aptitude for tool innovation. However, children's tool making must be explored across a broader range of tasks and across diverse cultural contexts before we can conclude that they are genuinely poor tool innovators. To this end, we investigated children's ability to independently construct 3 new tools using distinct actions: adding, subtracting, and reshaping. We tested 422 children across a broad age range from 5 geographic locations across South Africa (N = 126), Vanuatu (N = 190), and Australia (N = 106), which varied in their levels of exposure to Westernized culture. Children were shown a horizontal, transparent tube that had a sticker in its middle. Children were sequentially given each incomplete tool, which when accurately constructed could be used to push the sticker out of the tube. As predicted, older children were better at performing the innovation tasks than younger children across all cultures and innovation actions. We also found evidence for cultural variation: While all non-Western groups performed similarly, the Western group of children innovated at higher rates. However, children who did not innovate often adopted alternate methods when using the tools that also led to success. This suggests that children's innovation levels are influenced by the cultural environment, and highlights the flexibility inherent in human children's tool use.

Children hold strong ingroup biases from a young age, liking ingroup over outgroup members and preferring them as social learning models. Simultaneously, children are also highly prosocial--both in their own helping behaviors and their avoidance of those who behave antisocially. This study explores how children of 2 age groups (4-5 and 7-8 years) react when these biases conflict; that is, when children's ingroup behaves antisocially. Children were assigned to a group and given a premeasure of liking to assess ingroup bias. They were then shown videos of the ingroup behaving antisocially and the outgroup behaving prosocially (or neutral controls). Children were then given the opportunity to choose which group to imitate and whether they wanted to change groups and then again given a measure of liking. Results revealed that older children were highly sensitive to pro- and antisocial behavior; when their ingroup was antisocial they were less likely to imitate them, reported liking them less, and were more likely to want to change groups. In contrast, younger children imitated the ingroup and reported liking them more regardless of their behavior and actually reported wanting to change groups less when their group was antisocial. This demonstrates a clear developmental jump between younger and older children in their capacity to weigh multiple strands of information when making decisions, and in particular it highlights the emergence of strong prosocial concern that persists over a drive to affiliate with an ingroup.

Recent decades have seen a rapid acceleration in global participation in formal education, due to worldwide initiatives aimed to provide school access to all children. Research in high income countries has shown that school quality indicators have a significant, positive impact on numeracy and literacy—skills required to participate in the increasingly globalized economy. Schools vary enormously in kind, resources, and teacher training around the world, however, and the validity of using diverse school quality measures in populations with diverse educational profiles remains unclear. First, we assessed whether children's numeracy and literacy performance across populations improves with age, as evidence of general school‐related learning effects. Next, we examined whether several school quality measures related to classroom experience and composition, and to educational resources, were correlated with one another. Finally, we examined whether they were associated with children's (4–12‐year‐olds, N = 889) numeracy and literacy performance in 10 culturally and geographically diverse populations which vary in historical engagement with formal schooling. Across populations, age was a strong positive predictor of academic achievement. Measures related to classroom experience and composition were correlated with one another, as were measures of access to educational resources and classroom experience and composition. The number of teachers per class and access to writing materials were key predictors of numeracy and literacy, while the number of students per classroom, often linked to academic achievement, was not. We discuss these results in the context of maximising children's learning environments and highlight study limitations to motivate future research. Research Highlights: We examined the extent to which four measures of school quality were associated with one another, and whether they predicted children's academic achievement in 10 culturally and geographically diverse societies.Across populations, measures related to classroom experience and composition were correlated with one another as were measures of access to educational resources to classroom experience and composition.Age, the number of teachers per class, and access to writing materials were key predictors of academic achievement across populations.Our data have implications for designing efficacious educational initiatives to improve school quality globally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined future-oriented behavior in children (3-6 years; N = 193) from three diverse societies--one industrialized Western city and two small, geographically isolated communities. Children had the opportunity to prepare for two alternative versions of an immediate future event over six trials. Some 3-year-olds from all cultures demonstrated competence, and a majority of the oldest children from each culture prepared for both future possibilities on every trial. Although there were some cultural differences in the youngest age groups that approached ceiling performance, the overall results indicate that children across these communities become able to prepare for alternative futures during early childhood. This acquisition period is therefore not contingent on Western upbringing, and may instead indicate normal cognitive maturation.

Costly rituals are ubiquitous and adaptive. Yet, little is known about how children develop to acquire them. The current study examined children's imitation of costly rituals. Ninety‐three 4–6 year olds (47 girls, 45% Oceanians, tested in 2022) were shown how to place tokens into a tube to earn stickers, using either a ritualistic or non‐ritualistic costly action sequence. Children shown the ritualistic actions imitated faithfully at the expense of gaining stickers; conversely, those shown the non‐ritualistic actions ignored them and obtained maximum reward. This highlights how preschool children are adept at and motivated to learn rituals, despite significant material cost. This study provides insights into the early development of cultural learning and the adaptive value of rituals in group cognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]