Recalling experiences of scarcity reduces children's generosity relative to recalling abundance.

Does a sense of having less or more than what one needs affect one's generosity? The question of how resource access influences prosocial behavior has received much attention in studies with adults but has produced conflicting findings. To better understand this relationship, we tested whether resource access affects generosity in the developing mind. In our preregistered investigation, we used a narrative recall method to explore how temporary, experimentally evoked states of resource abundance or scarcity affect children's sharing.

Having less means wanting more: Children hold an intuitive economic theory of diminishing marginal utility.

Judgments surrounding resource acquisition and valuation are ubiquitous in daily life. How do humans decide what something is worth to themselves or someone else? One important cue to value is that of resource quantity. As described by economists, the principle of diminishing marginal utility (DMU) holds that as resource abundance increases, the value placed on each unit decreases; likewise, when resources become more scarce, the value placed on each unit rises.

"I know it's complicated": Children detect relevant information about object complexity.

Mechanistic complexity is an important property that affects how we interact with and learn from artifacts. Although highly complex artifacts have only recently become part of human material culture, they are ever-present in contemporary life. In previous research, children successfully detected complexity contrasts when given information about the functions of simple and complex objects.

Children strategically conceal selfishness.

Can children exploit knowledge asymmetries to get away with selfishness? This question was addressed by testing 6- to 9-year-old children (N = 164; 81 girls) from the Northeastern United States in a modified Ultimatum Game. Children were assigned to the roles of proposers (who offered some proportion of an endowment) and responders (who could accept or reject offers). Both players in the Informed condition knew the endowment quantity in each trial.

Trustworthiness is distinct from generosity in children.

Interpersonal trust is a key component of cooperation, helping support the complex social networks found across societies. Trust typically involves two parties, one who trusts by taking on risk through investment in a second party, who can be trustworthy and produce mutual benefits. To date, the developmental literature has focused primarily on the trustor, meaning we know little about the ontogeny of trustworthiness.

Children are more forgiving of accidental harms across development.

Forgiveness is a powerful feature of human social life, allowing for the restoration of positive cooperative relationships. Despite its importance, we know relatively little about how forgiveness develops during early life and the features that shape forgiveness decisions. Here, we investigated forgiveness behavior in children aged 5-10 years (N = 257) from the United States, varying transgressor intent and remorse in a behavioral task that pitted punishment against forgiveness.

The world within: Children are sensitive to internal complexity cues.

When reasoning about the mechanisms of complex entities, it is important to consider their internal parts. Previous research has shown that young children view "insides" as critical to how objects function. However, whether children hold specific expectations regarding complex objects' insides remains an open question.

Children employ wealth cues when predicting others' sharing.

Previous research has found that even young children accurately assign wealth labels (e.g., rich or poor) to real-world wealth symbols, such as pictures of houses.

"Wealth Makes Many Friends": Children Expect More Giving From Resource-Rich Than Resource-Poor Individuals.

Young children show social preferences for resource-rich individuals, although few studies have explored the causes underlying such preferences. We evaluate the viability of one candidate cause: Children believe that resource wealth relates to behavior, such that they expect the resource rich to be more likely to materially benefit others (including themselves) than the resource poor. In Studies 1 and 2 (ages 4-10), American children from predominantly middle-income families (n = 94) and Indian children from lower income families (n = 30) predicted that the resource rich would be likelier to share with others than the resource poor.

Diverse Effects, Complex Causes: Children Use Information About Machines' Functional Diversity to Infer Internal Complexity.

Four studies explored the abilities of 80 adults and 180 children (4-9 years), from predominantly middle-class families in the Northeastern United States, to use information about machines' observable functional capacities to infer their internal, "hidden" mechanistic complexity. Children as young as 4 and 5 years old used machines' numbers of functions as indications of complexity and matched machines performing more functions with more complex "insides" (Study 1). However, only older children (6 and older) and adults used machines' functional diversity alone as an indication of complexity (Studies 2-4).

Gender and discipline in 5-12-month-old infants: a longitudinal study.

We examined the effects of infant age and gender on the behaviors of infants and mothers during discipline interactions using longitudinal, naturalistic, home-based, taped observations of 16 mother-infant dyads (eight males and eight females). These observations were conducted between the child ages of 5 and 12 months and used a devised Maternal Discipline Coding System to code for the occurrence of discipline events. During discipline interactions, mothers vocalized longer, used harsher tones, and used more explanations with older compared to younger infants.

Defining MCI in the Framingham Heart Study Offspring: education versus WRAT-based norms.

Introduction: Psychometric definitions of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) typically use cut-off levels set at 1.5 SDs below age-adjusted and education-adjusted norms, assuming that the education adjustment accounts for premorbid abilities. However, noncognitive factors impact educational attainment, potentially leading to incorrect categorization as MCI.

Changing patterns of CAM use among prostate cancer patients two years after diagnosis: reasons for maintenance or discontinuation.

Objectives: To explore the extent to which men treated for early stage, localized prostate cancer maintain or discontinue CAM therapies over time and to investigate external as well as psychological factors that are related to maintenance or discontinuation of CAM therapies.

Design: A survey questionnaire was mailed to a subset of participants (N=225) from an earlier study that investigated the initiation and use of CAM therapies after a prostate cancer diagnosis.

Setting: Participants were recruited from a comprehensive cancer centre and affiliated network hospitals following treatment for early stage, localized prostate cancer.