Children and adults' intuitions of what people can believe.

Two preregistered studies tested how 5- to 6-year-olds, 7- to 8-year-olds, and adults judged the possibility of holding alternative beliefs (N = 240, 110 females, U.S. sample, mixed ethnicities, data collected from September 2020 through October 2021).

From outcome to process: A developmental shift in judgments of good reasoning.

What does it mean to reason well? One might argue that good reasoning means that the outcome of the reasoning process is correct: reaching the right belief. Alternatively, good reasoning might refer to the reasoning process itself: following the right epistemic procedures. In a preregistered study, we investigated children's (4-9-year-olds) and adults' judgments of reasoning in China and the US (N = 256).

Do chimpanzees reason logically?

Psychologists disagree about the development of logical concepts such as or and not. While some theorists argue that infants reason logically, others maintain that logical inference is contingent on linguistic abilities and emerges around age 4. In this Registered Report, we conducted five experiments on logical reasoning in chimpanzees.

How children revise their beliefs in light of reasons.

We investigate how the ability to respond appropriately to reasons provided in discourse develops in young children. In Study 1 (N = 58, Germany, 26 girls), 4- and 5-, but not 3-year-old children, differentiated good from bad reasons. In Study 2 (N = 131, Germany, 64 girls), 4- and 5-year-old children considered both the strength of evidence for their initial belief and the quality of socially provided reasons for an alternative view when deciding whether to change their minds.

Evidence for a dual-process account of over-imitation: Children imitate anti- and prosocial models equally, but prefer prosocial models once they become aware of multiple solutions to a task.

Children imitate actions that are perceivably unnecessary to achieve the instrumental goal of an action sequence, a behavior termed over-imitation. It is debated whether this behavior is based on the motivation to follow behavioral norms and affiliate with the model or whether it can be interpreted in terms of a behavioral heuristic to copy observed intentional actions without questioning the purpose of each action step. To resolve this question, we tested whether preschool-aged children (N = 89) over-imitate a prosocial model, a helper in a prior third-party moral transgression, but refuse to over-imitate an antisocial model, the perpetrator of the moral transgression.

Spreading the game: An experimental study on the link between children's overimitation and their adoption, transmission, and modification of conventional information.

Overimitation is hypothesized to foster the spread of conventional information within populations. The current study tested this claim by assigning 5-year-old children (N = 64) to one of two study populations based on their overimitation (overimitators [OIs] vs. non-overimitators [non-OIs]).

Carry-over effects of tool functionality and previous unsuccessfulness increase overimitation in children.

Children 'overimitate' causally irrelevant actions in experiments where both irrelevant and relevant actions involve a single common tool. This study design may make it harder for children to recognize the irrelevant actions, as the perceived functionality of the tool during the demonstration of the relevant action may be carried over to the irrelevant action, potentially increasing overimitation. Moreover, little is known how overimitation is affected by the demonstrator's expressed emotions and the child's prior success with the task.

Interpersonal Neural Synchrony During Father-Child Problem Solving: An fNIRS Hyperscanning Study.

Interpersonal neural synchrony (INS) has been previously evidenced in mother-child interactions, yet findings concerning father-child interaction are wanting. The current experiment examined whether fathers and their 5- to 6-year-old children (N = 66) synchronize their brain activity during a naturalistic interaction, and addressed paternal and child factors related to INS. Compared to individual problem solving and rest, father-child dyads showed increased INS in bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and left temporo-parietal junction during cooperative problem solving.

Preschoolers' Motivation to Over-Imitate Humans and Robots.

From preschool age, humans tend to imitate causally irrelevant actions-they over-imitate. This study investigated whether children over-imitate even when they know a more efficient task solution and whether they imitate irrelevant actions equally from a human compared to a robot model. Five-to-six-year-olds (N = 107) watched either a robot or human retrieve a reward from a puzzle box.

Neural synchrony in mother-child conversation: Exploring the role of conversation patterns.

Conversations are an essential form of communication in daily family life. Specific patterns of caregiver-child conversations have been linked to children's socio-cognitive development and child-relationship quality beyond the immediate family environment. Recently, interpersonal neural synchronization has been proposed as a neural mechanism supporting conversation.

The effects of interaction quality on neural synchrony during mother-child problem solving.

Understanding others is fundamental to interpersonal coordination and successful cooperation. One mechanism posited to underlie both effective communication and behavioral coordination is interpersonal neural synchrony. Although presumably foundational for children's social development, research on neural synchrony in naturalistic caregiver-child interactions is lacking.

Contrasting Social and Cognitive Accounts on Overimitation: The Role of Causal Transparency and Prior Experiences.

Three experiments (N = 100) examine the influence of causal information on overimitation. In Experiment 1, a transparent reward location reveals that the reward is unaffected by nonfunctional actions. When 5-year-olds observe an inefficient and subsequently an efficient strategy to retrieve a reward, they show overimitation in both phases-even though the reward is visible.

The role of social interaction and pedagogical cues for eliciting and reducing overimitation in preschoolers.

The tendency to imitate causally irrelevant actions is termed overimitation. Here we investigated (a) whether communication of a model performing irrelevant actions is necessary to elicit overimitation in preschoolers and (b) whether communication of another model performing an efficient action modulates the subsequent reduction of overimitation. In the study, 5-year-olds imitated irrelevant actions both when they were modeled by a communicative and pedagogical experimenter and when they were modeled by a non-communicative and non-pedagogical experimenter.