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Posts

June 11, 2013

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8:05 AM | LEGO figures are getting angrier
Nevermind increasingly violent video games or the ever-present danger of an uncensored internet, a far more insidious and unexpected change is afoot that could be affecting our children's emotional development. Researchers have discovered that the faces on LEGO Minifigures are becoming increasingly angry and less happy. Combined with a trend towards more combat-related LEGO themes, a team led by Christoph Bartneck at the University of Canterbury said "we cannot help but wonder how ... this […]

C Bartneck, M Obaid & K Zawieska (2013). Agents with faces - What can we learn from LEGO Minifigures?, Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Human-Agent Interaction (iHAI 2013), Sappor, Japan,

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June 03, 2013

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11:06 AM | Kids experience schadenfreude by age four, maybe earlier
Some of the most popular videos on YouTube are of would-be thieves getting their comeuppance, either knocked-out by brave store-keepers or caught out by their own dazzling ineptitude. Seeing a person deservedly suffer this way brings a special pleasure known as schadenfreude. A new study is the first to study whether young children are capable of experiencing this delight. Katrin Schulz and her colleagues presented simple picture stories to 100 children aged four to eight years (52 girls). […]

Schulz, K., Rudolph, A., Tscharaktschiew, N. & Rudolph, U. (2013). Daniel has fallen into a muddy puddle - Schadenfreude or sympathy?, British Journal of Developmental Psychology, DOI:

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May 30, 2013

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8:12 AM | What motivates Chinese "Tiger Mums"?
US law professor Amy Chua attracted controversy in 2011 when she published an article in the Wall Street Journal entitled Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior. The traditional Chinese parenting style that Chua described was strict and authoritarian - an approach now referred to popularly as Tiger Parenting, thanks to Chua's later book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. Past research supports the idea that parents of Chinese descent, whether in the US or China, tend to be more […]

Ng, F., Pomerantz, E. & Deng, C. (2013). Why Are Chinese Mothers More Controlling Than American Mothers? “My Child Is My Report Card”, Child Development, DOI:

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May 20, 2013

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8:10 AM | Stand by me: Close friendships appear to counteract genetic vulnerability to depression in girls, but not boys
Publication of US psychiatry's updated diagnostic code has provoked renewed debate in recent weeks over the extent to which mental illness ought to be framed as a psychosocial or a biological problem. The answer of course is that it is both. A new Canadian study captures this interplay, showing how close friendships appear to mitigate the risk for girls whose genes mean they are more vulnerable than average to depression. Mara Brendgen and her colleagues studied 294 pairs of twins aged ten […]

Brendgen, M., Vitaro, F., Bukowski, W., Dionne, G., Tremblay, R. & Boivin, M. (2013). Can friends protect genetically vulnerable children from depression?, Development and Psychopathology, 25 (02) 277-289. DOI:

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Neuroscience | Psychology
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May 09, 2013

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9:21 AM | Children aren't scared by nasty dentist visits, but by what they think of them
The Greek Stoic Epictetus wrote that "Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them." A new study involving 185 children and teenagers, 88 fathers and 97 mothers shows how this same principle applies to children's fear of the dentist. This is an important topic because many children avoid the dentist out of fear, and around half of dentally anxious adults trace their fears to childhood. Antonio Crego and his colleagues assessed the children's fear of the dentist, […]

Crego, A., Carrillo-Diaz, M., Armfield, J. & Romero, M. (2013). Applying the Cognitive Vulnerability Model to the analysis of cognitive and family influences on children's dental fear, European Journal of Oral Sciences, DOI:

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April 30, 2013

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8:37 AM | Toddlers are afraid of falling but not of heights
When we adults are confronted by a bridge, we're concerned not just by its width and sturdiness, but also by the height of the drop beneath. If there's a deep canyon, we'd usually rather the bridge was mighty strong and wide. If there's but a short drop, we'll happily jaunt along the narrowest, flimsiest of crossings - after all, it won't matter much if we fall. Infants - those aged 11 to 14 months - are different. They don't want to fall, so they're wary of narrow bridges. But the height of […]

Kretch, K. & Adolph, K. (2013). No bridge too high: Infants decide whether to cross based on the probability of falling not the severity of the potential fall, Developmental Science, 16 (3) 336-351. DOI:

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April 18, 2013

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8:12 AM | Exploiting children's social instincts to boost their learning
Young children's instinct for group membership can be exploited to boost their learning performance. That's according to a new study that recalls classic social psychology research conducted in the 1970s. Back then Henri Tajfel showed a darker side to this group mentality. In his "minimal group" studies, schoolboys were divided into two groups based merely on their preference for one of two artists. The arbitrary groups thus formed, the boys showed immediate bias against peers not in […]

Master, A. & Walton, G. (2013). Minimal Groups Increase Young Children's Motivation and Learning on Group-Relevant Tasks, Child Development, 84 (2) 737-751. DOI:

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April 08, 2013

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8:23 AM | Nine-month-olds prefer looking at unattractive (read: normal) male bodies
When faces were hidden or schematic, 9-month-olds preferred looking at the "unattractive" male bodies Out-of-shape new dads around the world take heart - your little munchkin thinks your fuller figure is nicer to look at than the ripped, six-pack-boasting torsos so often seen in magazines and after-shave adverts. Michelle Delaney at the University of Sheffield and her colleagues presented dozens of babies with pictures of pairs of Caucasian male bodies wearing only underwear: one […]

Heron-Delaney, M., Quinn, P., Lee, K., Slater, A. & Pascalis, O. (2013). Nine-month-old infants prefer unattractive bodies over attractive bodies, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 115 (1) 30-41. DOI:

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April 02, 2013

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8:23 AM | How children learn scientific thinking from their parents
Researchers in California have uncovered preliminary evidence for the way children acquire scientific "habits of thought" from their parents. Megan Luce and her colleagues recruited 35 parent-child pairs of various ethnic backgrounds (22 girls, 13 boys; 16 fathers, 19 mothers) at a children's museum, and videoed them as they read through a book designed to encourage discussion about scientific, social and moral issues - including global warming, gender differences, the planetary status […]

Luce, M., Callanan, M. & Smilovic, S. (2013). Links between parents' epistemological stance and children's evidence talk., Developmental Psychology, 49 (3) 454-461. DOI:

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March 12, 2013

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9:43 AM | It's possible to be patronised by a helpful three-year-old
Although small children love to help, you might think the support they can offer is pretty basic - you ask them to do something and they do it. In fact, a new research paper reveals a remarkable level of sophistication in the helping behaviour of three-year-olds. They take your ultimate goal into a account, and if they think they know better than you how to reach that goal, they'll help you in their own way - a skill that the researchers call "paternalistic helping". Nineteen three-year-olds […]

Martin, A. & Olson, K. (2013). When Kids Know Better: Paternalistic Helping in 3-Year-Old Children., Developmental Psychology, DOI:

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February 21, 2013

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8:59 AM | Lying is common at age two, becomes the norm by three
They're too young to need to fib about lipstick on their collar or even their unfinished homework but a new study finds the majority of three-year-olds are already practising liars. Deception in very young children has been documented before, but this is the first time it has been systematically tested in a laboratory. Angela Evans and Kang Lee tested 65 two- and three-year-olds (28 girls) individually in a quiet room, part of which involved them being told not to peek at a toy. Despite this […]

Evans, A. & Lee, K. (2013). Emergence of Lying in Very Young Children., Developmental Psychology, DOI:

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February 05, 2013

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9:17 AM | Live animals versus fancy toys - which do toddlers prefer?
Ignoring WC Fields' advice to "never work with children or animals", a team of researchers in the USA has done both at once in a research paper that compares children's interest in live animals against their interest in toys. Older children have an obvious affinity for animals, betrayed through their love of pets and zoos. That very small children share this affection for creatures is  usually taken as a given, but in fact it's an issue that's been subject to surprisingly little […]

LoBue, V., Bloom Pickard, M., Sherman, K., Axford, C. & DeLoache, J. (2013). Young children's interest in live animals, British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 31 (1) 57-69. DOI:

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January 08, 2013

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9:00 AM | The children of securely attached mothers think that God is close
Children's sense of God's closeness is apparently related, not to their mother's religiosity, but to their mother's attachment style - that is, whether the mother is calm and confident in her relationships or anxious and uncertain. Specifically, Rosalinda Cassibba and her colleagues have shown that the children of securely attached mothers (religious or not) tend to think that God is closer, as compared with the children of insecurely attached mothers. The new finding builds on claims made […]

Cassibba R, Granqvist P & Costantini A (2013). Mothers' attachment security predicts their children's sense of God's closeness., Attachment & human development, 15 (1) 51-64. PMID:

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Neuroscience | Psychology
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December 31, 2012

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9:41 AM | When parents lie to their children
We teach our kids that it is wrong to lie, even though most of us do it everyday. In fact, it is often our children who we are lying to. A new study, involving participants in the USA and China, is one of the first to investigate parental lies, finding that the majority of parents tell their children lies as a way to control their behaviour. Gail Heyman and her colleagues presented 114 parents in the USA and 85 in China with 16 so-called "instrumental lies" in four categories - lies intended […]

Heyman, G., Hsu, A., Fu, G. & Lee, K. (2012). Instrumental lying by parents in the US and China, International Journal of Psychology, 1-9. DOI:

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December 18, 2012

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8:57 AM | Why do toddlers bother learning to walk?
You're a cheeky 10-month-old, an expert crawler able to move with impressive speed on your hands and knees. The world is your oyster, so why do you bother staggering to your feet to become a doddering, novice walker? Before now, psychologists looking for an answer to this question have been handicapped by the lack of observational data on how infants crawl and walk in a natural environment. When it comes to language development, there's a long tradition of recording the words that infants […]

Adolph, K., Cole, W., Komati, M., Garciaguirre, J., Badaly, D., Lingeman, J., Chan, G. & Sotsky, R. (2012). How Do You Learn to Walk? Thousands of Steps and Dozens of Falls per Day, Psychological Science, 23 (11) 1387-1394. DOI:

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Neuroscience | Psychology
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November 29, 2012

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9:11 AM | How does drawing improve children's mood?
Watch a child draw and they can seem so absorbed, their brow furrowed in blissful concentration. It seems an ideal way for them to cope with negative emotion. But what's the best approach - should they draw about what's upsetting them ("venting"), copy illustrations by someone else, or create their own unrelated picture? Jennifer Drake and Ellen Winner first compared the effects of children venting versus creating their own picture. They recruited 83 kids age 6 to 12 at a museum. They nudged […]

Drake, J. & Winner, E. (2012). How children use drawing to regulate their emotions, Cognition & Emotion, 1-9. DOI:

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November 15, 2012

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9:38 AM | The jokes that toddlers make
Few sounds can be as heart-warming as a chuckling toddler. Often they're laughing at a joke you or someone else has performed, but what about their own attempts at humour? To find out, Elena Hoicka and Nameera Akhtar filmed 47 parent-child pairs (just five involved dads) playing for ten minutes with various toys. The kids were English-speaking and aged between 2 and 3 years. Coding of the videos revealed 7 forms of humour performed by the toddlers: using objects in an unconventional way […]

Hoicka, E. & Akhtar, N. (2012). Early humour production, British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 30 (4) 586-603. DOI:

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October 23, 2012

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8:36 AM | Why do children hide by covering their eyes?
A cute mistake that young children make is to think that they can hide themselves by covering or closing their eyes. Why do they make this error? A research team led by James Russell at the University of Cambridge has used a process of elimination to find out. Testing children aged around three to four years, the researchers first asked them whether they could be seen if they were wearing an eye mask, and whether the researcher could see another adult, if that adult was wearing an eye mask. […]

Russell, J., Gee, B. & Bullard, C. (2012). Why Do Young Children Hide by Closing Their Eyes? Self-Visibility and the Developing Concept of Self, Journal of Cognition and Development, 13 (4) 550-576. DOI:

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Neuroscience | Psychology
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October 18, 2012

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7:59 AM | Mums don't play so well with their toddlers' electronic toys
Attention toddlers of the world! The brightly coloured Cookie Shape Surprise toy from Fisher-Price promises a world of fun. Push the right shapes through the right holes and enjoy the reward of flashing lights, music and even the names of the shapes! The bad news? Well, frankly - with this toy, your mum's play skills are likely to take a dive. That's the message from a new study by psychologists in Vancouver. Where other studies have focused on the potential adverse effects of young children […]

Michaela B. Wooldridge & Jennifer Shapka (2012). Playing with technology: Mother–toddlerinteractionscores lower during play with electronic toys, Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, DOI:

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September 27, 2012

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8:07 AM | Parents underestimate their children's worry levels and overestimate their optimism
It's well-established that parents frequently overestimate their children's intelligence and the amount of exercise they get. Now a team led by Kristin Lagattuta has uncovered evidence suggesting that parents have an unrealistically rosy impression of their kiddies' emotional lives too. It's a finding with important implications for clinicians and child researchers who often rely on parental reports of young children's psychological wellbeing. It's previously been assumed that children […]

Lagattuta KH, Sayfan L & Bamford C (2012). Do you know how I feel? Parents underestimate worry and overestimate optimism compared to child self-report., Journal of experimental child psychology, 113 (2) 211-32. PMID:

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September 13, 2012

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8:00 AM | What children think of people who wear glasses
Removing his spectacles was part of Clark Kent's metamorphosis from geeky journalist into superhero. With popular symbolism like that, perhaps it's no wonder that Francine Jellesma has found many children endorse negative stereotypes about people who wear glasses. Jellesma conducted a literature review finding 28 relevant studies on this subject published since 1980. Although the results showed glasses were far less salient to children than other identifying features, such as gender, their […]

F.C. Jellesma (2012). Do glasses change children's perceptions? Effects of eyeglasses on peer- and self-perception, European Journal of Developmental Psychology, DOI:

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Editor's Pick

September 12, 2012

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8:00 AM | Another look at the "magical" benefit of frequent family meals
"The statistics are clear," Nancy Gibbs wrote in her article for Time magazine in 2006 entitled the Magic of the Family Meal: "Kids who dine with the folks are healthier, happier and better students". She's right, there is lots of evidence showing these positive associations, and there are plausible explanations for the benefits, such as a chance for children and parents to talk, and the sense of structure that the ritual provides. But as Daniel Miller and his colleagues point out in their […]

Daniel Miller, Jame Waldfogel & Wen-Jui Han (2012). Family meals and child academic and behavioural outcomes, Child Development, Other:

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August 01, 2012

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1:14 AM | What Causes Specific Language Impairment?
Professor Dorothy Bishop explains that research proves that SLI is not caused by environmental factors, but by genetics.
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Psychology
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Editor's Pick

July 31, 2012

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8:37 AM | Using yuk! and "unnaturalness" to teach children new morals
Some morals - such as it being wrong to hurt others - children learn because they see the distress a particular behaviour causes others, or the harm it can bring upon themselves. But other immoral behaviours don't necessarily have obvious victims. These relate to so-called purity-based morals, such as taboo sexual relations, sacrilegious acts or inappropriate eating behaviours. How do kids learn that these things are wrong, especially if they've never actually encountered them? A new […]

Rottman J & Kelemen D (2012). Aliens behaving badly: Children's acquisition of novel purity-based morals., Cognition, 124 (3) 356-60. PMID:

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July 24, 2012

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8:14 AM | Not in my gang: Children's and teenagers' reasons for excluding others
It's a fact of life that when kids form friendship groups some would-be members get left out. A lot of psychology research has focused on what it's like to be rejected. But now a new study has taken a more unusual approach, asking children and adolescents to recall times that they left someone out, and to explain their reasons for doing so. Holly Recchia and her team hope the findings could help design better interventions for reducing social exclusion. Eighty-four children were interviewed: […]

HE Recchia, BA Brehl & C Wainryb (2012). Children's and adolescents' reasons for socially excluding others, Cognitive Development, 195-203. DOI:

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May 24, 2012

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8:14 AM | ADHD Summer Camp
For harassed doctors and stressed-out parents, it can be tempting to treat a challenging child with ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) with pills and leave it at that. After all, early results from the one of the largest trials of its kind in the United States - the Multimodal Treatment Study of Children with ADHD (MTA) - showed that behavioural outcomes were better for children given the psychostimulant Ritalin, than for those given psychological treatment. However, follow-up […]

Gerber, W., Gerber-von Müller, G., Andrasik, F., Niederberger, U., Siniatchkin, M., Kowalski, J., Petermann, U. & Petermann, F. (2012). The impact of a multimodal Summer Camp Training on neuropsychological functioning in children and adolescents with ADHD: An exploratory study, Child Neuropsychology, 18 (3) 242-255. DOI:

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April 18, 2012

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8:00 AM | Toddlers don't take the risk of entrapment seriously
Infants can't tell us what they can and can't perceive in the world so psychologists make assumptions about this based on their behaviour. A new study by John Franchak and Karen Adolph at New York University exposes the limits of this approach, demonstrating that how babies choose to behave isn't based only on their perceptual abilities but also on their assessment of risk. Thirty-two 17-month-old infants were allocated to one of two conditions - they either had to judge [...]

Franchak, J. & Adolph, K. (2012). What Infants Know and What They Do: Perceiving Possibilities for Walking Through Openings., Developmental Psychology, DOI:

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April 04, 2012

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8:00 AM | Children with autism are less susceptible to the rubber hand illusion
The ability to tell where our bodies end and the rest of the world begins comes so naturally we tend not to give it much thought. In fact the brain mechanisms underlying bodily-identity are a vital part of basic social functioning. Given that social difficulties are a central part of autism, a team of US researchers led by Carissa Cascio wondered whether autism might be associated with differences in these basic mechanisms underlying body ownership. To find out, they performed the [...]

Cascio, C., Foss-Feig, J., Burnette, C., Heacock, J. & Cosby, A. (2012). The rubber hand illusion in children with autism spectrum disorders: delayed influence of combined tactile and visual input on proprioception, Autism, DOI:

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March 21, 2012

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9:00 AM | Children as young as four express liberal views about gender
Children as young as four already show some awareness that gender roles are flexible and that individual preferences are an acceptable reason for not conforming to gender norms. That's according to a study with 72 four- to eight-year-olds in the United States, completed by Clare Conry-Murray at Pennsylvania State University and Elliot Turiel at University California, Berkeley. Their findings contrast with a bias in the existing literature towards showing how young children have [...]
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Neuroscience | Psychology

January 12, 2012

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5:00 PM | KidsPeace.Org
URL: http://www.kidspeace.org/KidsPeace is a private charity dedicated to serving the behavioral and mental health needs of children, families and communities. For: ConsumersTopics: Academia, Behaviour Management, Child and Adolescent, Clinical Psychology, Developmental, Educational Psychology, Emotional Health, General Psychology, Lifestyle, Social Support, Solution Focused, YouthFeatures: Articles, Clinical Tools, Information, Links, Newsletter, ResourcesKidsPeace is a private charity [...]
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