Coordinating movements and beliefs: Different facets of doing things together.

This study investigates the relations between two forms of joint action (JA)-movement coordination (MC) and goal attainment-and theory of mind (ToM), contrasting the interactionist and traditional cognitivist views. A custom task was carried out to measure the properties of the JAs between children and their parents, while classical tasks were performed to measure first- and second-order ToM. Thereafter, cross-recurrence quantification analysis was applied to quantify participants' movements. The children were from Poland and were aged 42, 66, and 78 months (N = 297, 133 girls, White, from a large city). The results suggested that the characteristics of dyad MC influence goal attainment and are related to children's first-order ToM (R2  = .447) but not to their second-order ToM.

The coin that is most current is flattery? Stability and discontinuity of false praise-telling from 5 to 7 years of life.

Preschool children engage in flattery behaviors, including expressing opinions toward other people or objects that-although favorable-are not truly held. Research shows that in the following years, the number and complexity of motives underlying such insincere behavior increase. The current study focused on children's overt behavior, examining two aspects of the development of false praise-telling: individual stability and group-level discontinuity. Using an art-rating task, a total of 164 children aged 5 to 7 years were tested at three points in time (T1/2/3): MT1 age = 5.66 years, SD = 0.1; MT2 age = 6.65 years, SD = 0.16; MT3 age = 7.61 years, SD = 0.14. The results show that, having become capable of giving false praise in politeness settings at 5.5 years of age, children continue to flatter others in this way at later ages, indicating that false praise-telling is an individually stable characteristic. In addition, a statistically significant increase in the proportion of false praise-telling to non-lying behavior in children over the 2-year study period was observed. This indicates that the discontinuity, namely the growth in children's flattery behavior, occurs from 5 to 7 years of age. The findings are discussed with respect to the diverse factors that might underlie and affect children's tendency to praise others falsely in politeness settings.

Theory of Mind and Peer Attachment in Adolescence.

A growing body of research on theory of mind (ToM) highlights its significance for childhood social outcomes. Extending the developmental scope of this work, the current study investigated links between advanced ToM abilities and peer attachment in adolescence. Polish adolescents (16 to 18 years old; N = 302; 57.6% girls) completed two advanced ToM measures and reported on their peer attachment. With the effects of age and language controlled, girls scored higher than boys for both advanced ToM and peer attachment. However, the association between these measures was only significant in boys. These results are discussed in terms of theory and research on gender-specific approaches to social cognitive development in adolescence.

Measuring advanced theory of mind: Do story-based tasks work?

INTRODUCTION: Although much is known about theory of mind (ToM) development during childhood, data on how these skills develop in adolescence is scarce. This cavity is due in part to the limited knowledge about measures of advanced theory of mind. METHODS: The study examined the relation among six common story-based tasks designed to measure advanced ToM in two age groups of Polish adolescents: early (13-year-olds; 78 girls) and late (16-year-olds; 143 girls) adolescents. RESULTS: Factor models for individual tasks were constructed, followed by an examination of the underlying structure that explained the variability of factor scores. Only in half of the tasks, the results revealed an age-related increase in advanced ToM. Contrary to expectation, results showed a lack of correlations among story-based advanced ToM tasks in the two adolescent groups. CONCLUSIONS: The results suggest a lack of coherence among advanced story-based ToM tasks and the need for further development of reliable and valid advanced ToM measures which are sensitive enough to show increasingly complex social reasoning abilities in adolescence.

Let's do it together! The role of interaction in false belief understanding.

From the interaction theory perspective, we aimed to verify whether the interactive context in which theory of mind is measured can allow children younger than 4 years to pass the verbal false belief task (FBT). Therefore, an interactive FBT (iFBT) was devised, in which children were actively engaged in the story, and was used to test 210 children twice: first when they were 3 years old and again when they were 3.5 years old. Most 3-year-olds were unable to pass the iFBT (28% passed), but a half year later their performance was enhanced and they passed at a rate above chance level (59% passed). In addition, among 3.5-year-olds, passing the iFBT increases the chance of passing the standard FBT by four times. We conclude that the interactive mode of the FBT facilitates false belief understanding in children under 4 years of age.

Change and Consistency of Self-Esteem in Early and Middle Adolescence in the Context of School Transition.

Self-esteem is continuous and has stable characteristics, but it may also change, e.g., during transitions from one educational level to the next. In a prospective cross-sectional study over a year and a half, 250 Polish early adolescents (N = 109, 54 girls; mean age at T1 = 12.68 years, SD = 0.49) and middle adolescents (N = 141, 107 girls; mean age at T1 = 15.80, SD = 0.44) were tested three times using Harter's Self-Perception Profile for Adolescents, assessing both global self-esteem and self-evaluation in eight domains. The change and consistency of self-esteem were analyzed, at both group and individual levels. At the group level, the following results were found: (1) continuity of self-esteem in five domains (scholastic competence, athletic competence, physical appearance, close friendship, and romantic appeal) and in global self-esteem and discontinuity in only three domains (social acceptance, job competence, and behavioral conduct); (2) significant inter-individual variation in the change not explained by age; and (3) higher self-esteem (in five domains) in early adolescents. At the individual level, the stability in most domains was weak, but was restored over the second year at the new school. The complexity of the developmental change and consistency in self-esteem in adolescence was highlighted, emphasizing the need for analyzing both group and individual change.

The first signs of prospective memory.

We conducted a study to examine the impact of motivation and length of delay on performance on prospective memory (PM) tasks in 2-year of children. A total of 158 children aged exactly 24 months were asked to perform a naturalistic PM task. Length of delay (10 min; 35 min) and motivation (high; very high) were between-subjects factors. Two thirds of children had to be excluded from the analysis because of poor retrospective memory for the PM task instructions which were no longer remembered at the end of the session. For the children who did remember the instructions, both motivation and delay had significant effects on PM. Also, their PM performance was reliably above zero, even after the long delay. The findings indicate that when children as young as 24 months are able to remember the PM task instructions they can reliably succeed in PM tasks that are intrinsically motivating for them.

Advanced theory of mind in adolescence: Do age, gender and friendship style play a role?

The ability to recursively infer the mental states of others to explain their complex behavior in ambiguous social situation may be called Advanced Theory of Mind (aToM). The relations between two components of aToM, cognitive and affective, measured on a behavioral level in 151 Polish 13-year-olds and 174 16-year-olds was examined. The role of age, gender and friendship style and its relations to the cognitive and affective aToM was explored. Cognitive aToM was only weakly to moderately related to affective aToM. Across both age groups females scored higher than males. Males' aToM abilities did not differ according to age, but they scored higher in the cognitive aToM than affective ToM. Also, different aspects of friendship style were significant predictors of both aToM abilities. The implications for two aToM components within a gendered social context were discussed.

May the supplementation of lipid emulsion containing DHA in VLBW infants influence their psychological development evaluated at three years of age? Preliminary study.

OBJECTIVES: The aim of the study was to evaluate the possible influence of a lipid emulsion containing DHA (docosahexaenoic polyunsaturated fatty acid), parenterally administered from the first day of life, on the psychological development of 3-year-old children born with very low birth weight (VLBW). It was suspected that an increased amount of DHA in parenteral nutrition may be a variable that modifies the relation between other medical or social factors and their influence on the child's development. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Two groups of three-year-old children with calendar age ranging from 29 to 51 months (mean value--38 months) were tested. The children in the study group (n=23) were parenterally nourished during the first weeks of life with a lipid emulsion containing DHA. The patients in the control group (n=13) were fed with a lipid emulsion without DHA. RESULTS: Using the General Linear Model (GLM) with the analysis of interaction effects, it was found that the supplementation of the lipid emulsion containing DHA in parenteral nutrition from the first day of life beneficially influenced the relation between immaturity associated with the children's health status at birth and emotional development evaluated at three years of age. It also modified the relation between emotional and linguistic development. CONCLUSIONS: When administered after birth in prematurely born children, the lipid emulsion containing DHA may influence their development at the age of three years. It may either compensate the negative effects that immaturity associated with the health status at birth has on emotional development, or stimulate the language development in children whose emotional development is normal.

Peeking and lying in the temptation resistance paradigm in 2.5-year-olds: The role of inhibitory control.

The main aim of the present study was to establish whether inhibitory control (IC) abilities influence the peeking and lying behaviours of 2.5-year-olds, as measured by a modified temptation resistance paradigm (mTRP). Using a longitudinal design, 252 children's IC abilities were tested at ages 1.5, 2 and 2.5, as well as their ability to lie at age 2.5. Results showed that 35% of 2.5-year-olds peeked, 27% of peekers lied and 40% of non-peekers falsely confessed they had peeked. Non-peekers had higher IC than peekers at ages 2 and 2.5. Lower IC at age 2 increased the probability of peeking at age 2.5 by 6 times. The highest level of IC was presented in children who followed the adult's restrictions in the mTRP and were then able to tell the truth about their behaviour. These results suggested that the first, or so-called primary, lies of 2.5-year-olds are probably spontaneous, rather than deliberate. Implications for further research were discussed.

Developmental continuity in coordination of perspectives as an alternative to the implicit and explicit theory of mind controversy.

The dichotomy between explicit and implicit theory of mind remains controversial. This study proposed a developmental and social-constructionist perspective that challenges this notion through a model showing that coordination of perspectives (CoP) is a continuously developing ability in children. Our tested model comprises eight distinct abilities that emerge sequentially. We tested our model using 25 different tasks in a longitudinal six-wave study with 300 native Polish children aged from 1 year (MT1 = 1 year 0 months; SDT1 = 1.73 weeks; 44% girls) to 3.5 years (MT6 = 3 years 6 months; SDT6 = 1.81 weeks; 45% girls). All children were Caucasian; both parents of 54% children had university degree. Structural equation modeling with factor scores for each of the eight abilities was used to verify the fit of obtained data. We provide preliminary support for distinguishing six abilities: (a) immediate social perspective-tracking and taking at age of 1 year, (b) deferred social perspective-tracking and visual perspective-taking as an intermediate step at age of 2 years, and (c) epistemic perspective-tracking and taking at 3.5 years. Using our new nomenclature-emphasizing the function of coordination of own and another person perspective in social situations-we found that development of mindreading begins when infants coordinate their bodily-expressed orientations with those of others, and by the age of 4 is manifested by coordinating own and others mental states. Thus, we support the idea of heterotypic continuity of mindreading development. Development of CoP and difference between perspective-tracking and taking should be further elucidated. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Ratunku! or Just Tunku! Evidence for the Reliability and Concurrent Validity of the Language Use Inventory-Polish.

Purpose To date, there is no tool for assessing early pragmatic development of Polish-speaking children. This study aimed to adapt to Polish a standardized parent report measure, the Language Use Inventory (LUI; O'Neill, 2009, in order to enable cross-cultural comparisons and to use the LUI-Polish to screen for pragmatic development in children 18-47 months of age. We concentrated on the sociocultural and functional adaptation of LUI and aimed to demonstrate its reliability, developmental sensitivity, and concurrent validity. Method Parents completed an online version of LUI-Polish, longitudinally at 3 time points (when the child was 20, 32, and 44 months old). In addition, parents completed the Polish adaptations of the Questionnaire for Communication and Early Language at 22 months and the Language Development Survey at 24 months. Children's spontaneous speech was assessed at 24 months, and their expressive and receptive vocabulary was assessed at 36 months. Results All 3 parts of the LUI-Polish (Gestures, Words, and Sentences) showed very good levels of internal consistency at each time point. Significant correlations were observed between all parts of the LUI-Polish at all 3 measurement time points. The expected developmental trajectory was observed for boys and girls providing evidence of its developmental sensitivity for children between the ages of 2 and 4 years: an increase with age in the total score (due to an increase in Words and Sentences) and a decrease in Gestures. Supporting concurrent validity, significant correlations were found between children's performance on (a) the LUI-Polish at 20 months and the Questionnaire for Communication and Early Language at 22 months as well as the Language Development Survey and spontaneous speech measures at 24 months and (b) the LUI-Polish at 32 months and the 2 measures of vocabulary comprehension and production at 36 months. Conclusion The Polish adaptation of the LUI demonstrated good psychometric properties that provide a sound basis for cross-cultural comparisons and further research toward norming of the LUI-Polish. Moreover, the expected developmental trajectory in the pragmatic development of Polish children was observed.

Waiting for a treat. Studying behaviors related to self-regulation in 18- and 24-month-olds.

The ability to delay gratification - conceived as an early expression of self-regulation - develops in the second half of the second year of life. We used inductive methodology to identify different behaviors and set of behaviors performed by children while waiting for a treat. We asked which sets are more effective when it comes to successfully delaying gratification and how all observed sets change during toddler age. 130 children were tested twice - at 18 and at 24 months - using a Snack Delay Task. We observed 20 different behaviors and distinguished 4 sets of behaviors. The most important and effective set for delaying gratification in 18 and in 24 month olds was the set called Attention and Movements. We concluded that growth in the ability to delay gratification resulted from increased ability to overcome temptation by using an active strategy mainly based on attention.

Polish Vocabulary Development in 2-Year-Olds: Comparisons With English Using the Language Development Survey.

Purpose: The objective of this study was to compare vocabulary size and composition in 2-year-olds learning Polish or English as measured by the Language Development Survey (LDS; Rescorla, 1989). Method: Participants were 199 Polish toddlers (M = 24.14 months, SD = 0.35) and 422 U.S. toddlers (M = 24.69 months, SD = 0.78). Results: Test-retest reliability was .92, internal consistency was .99, and concurrent validity was .55. Girls had higher vocabulary scores than boys. Mean LDS score was significantly lower in Polish than in English, and fewer Polish children had LDS scores >200 words. Also, more words were reported for <25% of the children, and fewer words were reported for ≥75% of the children, in Polish than in English. The cross-linguistic correlation for word frequencies was .44. Noun dominance was comparable in the two languages, and 55 cross-linguistic word matches were found among the top 100 words. Although more Polish than U.S. children had <50 words (18.1% vs. 8.3%), children with <50 words and those with ≥50 words were generally acquiring the same words. Conclusions: Vocabulary acquisition appeared to be slower in Polish than in English, probably because of the complexity of the language. However, the languages were very similar with respect to vocabulary composition findings.

How Does L1 and L2 Exposure Impact L1 Performance in Bilingual Children? Evidence from Polish-English Migrants to the United Kingdom.

Most studies on bilingual language development focus on children's second language (L2). Here, we investigated first language (L1) development of Polish-English early migrant bilinguals in four domains: vocabulary, grammar, phonological processing, and discourse. We first compared Polish language skills between bilinguals and their Polish non-migrant monolingual peers, and then investigated the influence of the cumulative exposure to L1 and L2 on bilinguals' performance. We then examined whether high exposure to L1 could possibly minimize the gap between monolinguals and bilinguals. We analyzed data from 233 typically developing children (88 bilingual and 145 monolingual) aged 4;0 to 7;5 (years;months) on six language measures in Polish: receptive vocabulary, productive vocabulary, receptive grammar, productive grammar (sentence repetition), phonological processing (non-word repetition), and discourse abilities (narration). Information about language exposure was obtained via parental questionnaires. For each language task, we analyzed the data from the subsample of bilinguals who had completed all the tasks in question and from monolinguals matched one-on-one to the bilingual group on age, SES (measured by years of mother's education), gender, non-verbal IQ, and short-term memory. The bilingual children scored lower than monolinguals in all language domains, except discourse. The group differences were more pronounced on the productive tasks (vocabulary, grammar, and phonological processing) and moderate on the receptive tasks (vocabulary and grammar). L1 exposure correlated positively with the vocabulary size and phonological processing. Grammar scores were not related to the levels of L1 exposure, but were predicted by general cognitive abilities. L2 exposure negatively influenced productive grammar in L1, suggesting possible L2 transfer effects on L1 grammatical performance. Children's narrative skills benefitted from exposure to two languages: both L1 and L2 exposure influenced story structure scores in L1. Importantly, we did not find any evidence (in any of the tasks in which the gap was present) that the performance gap between monolinguals and bilinguals could be fully closed with high amounts of L1 input.