Preschoolers retain more details from event sequences 1 week following an in-group demonstration.

Previous research highlights that the learning processes of preschool-aged children are influenced by the cultural group membership of the information sources. As of yet, however, no study has aimed to explore the influence of cultural group membership on the long-term retention of novel information. In the current study, 4-year-old children observed three event sequences that were demonstrated by either an adult speaking their native language or a foreign language speaker.

"The Red Spots Are Now Lava, We Shouldn't Step on Them"-The Joint Creation of Novel Arbitrary Social Contexts in Pretend Play.

Pretend play has been extensively studied in developmental science, nevertheless important questions remain about how children engage in and navigate between pretend episodes. In this proposal, we scrutinize childhood pretense from a social cognitive developmental point of view. First, we review previous theories of pretend play structured around important questions that pinpoint some attributes of pretend episodes, such as their transient and socially defined nature.

Young children expect pretend object identities to be known only by their partners in joint pretence.

The present study examined whether three-year-old children (age = 42-48 months, n = 57; 31 boys) understand that object identities stipulated during pretend play could only be known by people witnessing the stipulation. Children participated in pretend scenarios that included some objects and two experimenters. Two pretend episodes corresponded to an object: one connected to its conventional function, the other to a pretend identity made-up on the spot.