Thinking about thinking: A longitudinal investigation linking developments in metacognition, inhibitory control, and theory of mind.

This longitudinal study tracked the developmental relations linking metacognition, theory of mind, and inhibitory control in 52 children across a 1.5-year interval, beginning at 3 or 4 years of age. Metacognition and inhibitory control emerged before theory of mind and predicted subsequent theory of mind competence.

The self-memory system: Exploring developmental links between self and memory across early to late childhood.

This study tests whether developments in self-knowledge and autobiographical memory across early to late childhood are related. Self-descriptions and autobiographical memory reports were collected from 379 three- to eleven-year-old predominantly white Scottish children, M = 90.3 months, SD = 31.

Mine for life: Charting ownership effects in memory from adolescence to old age.

This study investigates the self-reference effect (SRE) with an ownership memory task across several age groups, providing the first age exploration of implicit ownership memory biases from adolescence to older adulthood ( = 159). Using a well-established ownership task, participants were required to sort images of grocery items as belonging to themselves or to a fictitious unnamed Other. After sorting and a brief distractor task, participants completed a surprise one-step source memory test.

Art at the Start: A controlled trial and close observation of parent-infant art therapy intervention.

This two-part study seeks to evidence art therapy intervention for parent-infant attachment relationships, looking at improvements to wellbeing and relationships. Study one was a controlled trial with 105 participating parent/caregivers and their infants (0-3-years), identified due to concerns about their relationship. They were quasi-randomized to attend a 12-week art therapy group or treatment as usual.

Contrasting one's share of the shared life space: Comparing the roles of metacognition and inhibitory control in the development of theory of mind among Scottish and Japanese children.

Cultural comparisons suggest that an understanding of other minds may develop sooner in independent versus interdependent settings, and vice versa for inhibitory control. From a western lens, this pattern might be considered paradoxical, since there is a robust positive relationship between theory of mind (ToM) and inhibitory control in western samples. In independent cultures, an emphasis on one's own mind offers a clear route to 'simulate' other minds, and inhibitory control may be required to set aside one's own perspective to represent the perspective of others.

Put you in the problem: Effects of self-pronouns on mathematical problem-solving.

Self-cues such as personal pronouns are known to elicit processing biases, such as attention capture and prioritisation in working memory. This may impact the performance of tasks that have a high attentional load like mathematical problem-solving. Here, we compared the speed and accuracy with which children solved numerical problems that included either the self-cue "you," or a different character name.

Change in the psychological self in people living with dementia: A scoping review.

Alterations in one's sense of self are often considered a significant psychological symptom of dementia. However, the self is not a unified construct; it consists of a set of closely connected, yet substantive, manifestations which might not be equally impacted by dementia. Recognising the multidimensional nature of the self, the current scoping review aimed to explore the nature and scope of the evidence demonstrating change in the psychological self in people living with dementia.

The Experiences of Parents and Infants Using a Home-Based Art Intervention Aimed at Improving Wellbeing and Connectedness in Their Relationship.

During the period of COVID-19 restrictions, we offered vulnerable families with 0 to 3 year old children boxes of art resources and guided creative activities to do together at home. This paper explores families' experiences of this intervention, highlighting their perceptions of change in wellbeing and attachment. There is a developing case for the social benefits of art, including the impact of arts on mental health and on the wellbeing of children.

Development of evaluative and incidental self-reference effects in childhood.

The self-reference effect (SRE) is the memory enhancement associated with information linked to self. Unlike 4- to 6-year-olds, adults show stronger memory enhancement when self-processing is "evaluative" (eSRE) than when self-processing is "incidental" (iSRE). Here, the developmental change from shallow to rich self-processing was programmatically explored.

Children's perception of visual and auditory ambiguity and its link to executive functions and creativity.

The phenomenon of perceptual bistability provides insights into aspects of perceptual processing not normally accessible to everyday experience. However, most experiments have been conducted in adults, and it is not clear to what extent key aspects of perceptual switching change through development. The current research examined the ability of 6-, 8-, and 10-year-old children (N = 66) to switch between competing percepts of ambiguous visual and auditory stimuli and links between switching rate, executive functions, and creativity.

The Me in Memory: The Role of the Self in Autobiographical Memory Development.

This article tests the hypothesis that self-development plays a role in the offset of childhood amnesia; assessing the importance of both the capacity to anchor a memory to the self-concept, and the strength of the self-concept as an anchor. This research demonstrates for the first time that the volume of 3- to 6-year old's specific autobiographical memories is predicted by both the volume of their self-knowledge, and their capacity for self-source monitoring within self-referencing paradigms (N = 186). Moreover, there is a bidirectional relation between self and memory, such that autobiographical memory mediates the link between self-source monitoring and self-knowledge.

You and me: Investigating the role of self-evaluative emotion in preschool prosociality.

Self-evaluative emotions depend on internalized social standards and motivate social action. However, there is a lack of empirical research documenting the impact of self-evaluative emotion on 3- and 4-year-olds' prosociality. Extant research relates children's experiences of guilt to empathetic concern and making amends.

Bilingual advantage, bidialectal advantage or neither? Comparing performance across three tests of executive function in middle childhood.

When bilinguals speak, both fluent language systems become activated in parallel and exert an influence on speech production. As a consequence of maintaining separation between the two linguistic systems, bilinguals are purported to develop enhanced executive control functioning. Like bilinguals, individuals who speak two dialects must also maintain separation between two linguistic systems, albeit to a lesser degree.

Cultural differences in self-recognition: the early development of autonomous and related selves?

Fifteen- to 18-month-old infants from three nationalities were observed interacting with their mothers and during two self-recognition tasks. Scottish interactions were characterized by distal contact, Zambian interactions by proximal contact, and Turkish interactions by a mixture of contact strategies. These culturally distinct experiences may scaffold different perspectives on self.