Causal learning, counterfactual reasoning and pretend play: a cross-cultural comparison of Peruvian, mixed- and low-socioeconomic status U.S. children.

Pretend play universally emerges during early childhood and may support the development of causal inference and counterfactual reasoning. However, the amount of time spent pretending, the value that adults place on pretence and the scaffolding adults provide vary by both culture and socioeconomic status (SES). In middle class U.

Culture moderates the relationship between self-control ability and free will beliefs in childhood.

We investigate individual, developmental, and cultural differences in self-control in relation to children's changing belief in "free will" - the possibility of acting against and inhibiting strong desires. In three studies, 4- to 8-year-olds in the U.S.

Young Children Are Wishful Thinkers: The Development of Wishful Thinking in 3- to 10-Year-Old Children.

Previously, research on wishful thinking has found that desires bias older children's and adults' predictions during probabilistic reasoning tasks. In this article, we explore wishful thinking in children aged 3- to 10-years-old. Do young children learn to be wishful thinkers? Or do they begin with a wishful thinking bias that is gradually overturned during development? Across five experiments, we compare low- and middle-income United States and Peruvian 3- to 10-year-old children (N = 682).

Causal Learning Across Culture and Socioeconomic Status.

Extensive research has explored the ability of young children to learn about the causal structure of the world from patterns of evidence. These studies, however, have been conducted with middle-class samples from North America and Europe. In the present study, low-income Peruvian 4- and 5-year-olds and adults, low-income U.

Changes in cognitive flexibility and hypothesis search across human life history from childhood to adolescence to adulthood.

How was the evolution of our unique biological life history related to distinctive human developments in cognition and culture? We suggest that the extended human childhood and adolescence allows a balance between exploration and exploitation, between wider and narrower hypothesis search, and between innovation and imitation in cultural learning. In particular, different developmental periods may be associated with different learning strategies. This relation between biology and culture was probably coevolutionary and bidirectional: life-history changes allowed changes in learning, which in turn both allowed and rewarded extended life histories.