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Authorship：Lead author,　Corresponding author   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：Frontiers Media SA  

Introduction

Adults possess a natural inclination to associate sensory cues derived from distinct modalities, such as the pairing of sweet with pink. However, studies exploring crossmodal correspondences in children, particularly in the sensory pairing of visual features and tastes, are scant, leaving unanswered questions regarding the developmental trajectory of crossmodal correspondences. The present study investigates whether Japanese preschool children demonstrate specific biases in shape–color, shape–taste, and color–taste associations.

Methods

In a series of in-person experiments, 92 children between 3 to 6 years of age completed matching tasks utilizing paper stimuli.

Results

Children exhibit crossmodal correspondences in shape-color (circle-red and asymmetrical star-yellow), shape–taste (triangle-salty and circle-sweet), and color–taste (yellow-sour, black-bitter, and pink-sweet) associations. Moreover, children’s choices are not influenced by their individual preferences.

Discussion

The crossmodal correspondences observed in this study have been observed in previous research on adults from the same (Japanese) culture, although adults showed more crossmodal correspondences than the children in this study (e.g., pink-circle, triangle-sour, and green-bitter). Thus, while some crossmodal correspondences emerge during childhood, others may require additional time to develop, thereby highlighting the importance of understanding the cognitive mechanisms underlying crossmodal correspondences from an ontogenic perspective.

DOI： 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1226661

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：Wiley  

DOI： 10.1111/ajsp.12568

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Scopus

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：Springer Science and Business Media LLC  

<title>Abstract</title>The COVID-19 pandemic has led children to experience school closures. Although increasing evidence suggests that such intense social quarantine influences children’s social relationships with others, longitudinal studies are limited. Using longitudinal data collected during (T1) and after (T2) intensive school closure and home confinement, this study investigated the impacts of social quarantine on children’s social relationships. Japanese parents of children aged 0–9 years (<italic>n</italic> = 425) completed an online questionnaire that examined children’s socio-emotional behavior and perceived proximity to parents or others. The results demonstrated that social quarantine was not significantly related to children’s socio-emotional behavior across all age groups. However, changes in children’s perceived proximity varied depending on certain age-related factors: elementary schoolers’ perceived closeness to parents significantly decreased after the reopening of schools, whereas that to others, such as peers, increased. Such effects were not observed in infants and preschoolers. The follow-up survey 9-month after the reopening of schools (T3; <italic>n</italic> = 130) did not detect significant differences in both children’s socio-emotional behavior and perceived proximity from that after the intense quarantine. These findings suggest that school closure and home confinement may have influenced children’s social development differently across their age, and its effects were larger in perceived closeness rather than social behavior.

DOI： 10.1038/s41598-022-04944-2

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Other Link： https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-04944-2

Authorship：Lead author,　Corresponding author   Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：Frontiers Media SA  

Nature vs. nurture is an enduring theme of studies of the mind. Past studies on American children and adults have revealed a preference for thinking that even fundamental cognitive abilities documented in human infants and non-human species are late-emerging and reliant on learning and nurture. However, little is known about the generalizability of this “intuitive empiricist” belief and what factors may help explain it. Adult participants (N = 600) reported their beliefs about the emergence of several fundamental cognitive abilities demonstrated by preverbal infants. Studies 1A-1C showed that adults from both Japan and the US similarly estimated an older age of onset for cognitive abilities in human children as compared to the findings of cognitive science and consistently attributed acquisition of these abilities to learning rather than innateness in humans, and they made these learning attributions more so for humans than for non-human species. Study 2 showed that participants’ beliefs about biological evolution versus creationism were related to their age onset estimates for fundamental cognitive abilities, and their beliefs about the malleability of intelligence were related to participants’ explanations of the origin of fundamental cognitive abilities. These findings suggest generalizable preferences for nurture over nature across both Eastern and Western cultures (Japan and the United States), which may be related to people’s beliefs about human origins and the power of learning.

DOI： 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.974434

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：Springer Science and Business Media LLC  

Abstract

Japan has a large gender gap; thus, this study examined whether Japanese 4- to 7-year-old children exhibit a “brilliance = males” stereotype and whether parental attitudes toward gender roles were related to children’s stereotypes. We also explored whether the children exhibited such stereotypes in response to various stimuli. We showed children photos (Study 1) and stick figures (Study 2) of men, women, boys, and girls, asking them to attribute traits (smart or nice) to each. Study 1 revealed overwhelming in-group positivity in girls, whereas the results for boys were rather mixed. In Study 2, girls generally attributed nice to their own gender compared to boys. However, “brilliance = males” stereotypical responses were observed from 7 years of age, when boys began to be more likely to attribute smartness to their own gender compared to girls. The new data in Study 3 replicated results of Study 1 and parts of the results of Study 2. Moreover, merging the Study 3 data with that of Studies 1 and 2 confirmed their findings. Furthermore, it replicated the “brilliance = males” stereotype among 7-year-olds in the stick figure task. Parental attitudes toward gender roles were unrelated to children’s gender stereotypes. The results indicated that Japanese children may acquire “brilliance = males” stereotypes later than American children (6-years-old). Furthermore, the results were clearer when children were presented with stick figure stimuli.

DOI： 10.1038/s41598-022-20815-2

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Other Link： https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-20815-2

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：Elsevier BV  

DOI： 10.1016/j.cogdev.2022.101224

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Authorship：Corresponding author   Language：English  

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：Frontiers Media SA  

Efficient data collection in developmental studies is facing challenges due to the decreased birth rates in many regions, reproducibility problems in psychology research, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Here, we propose a novel platform for online developmental science research, the Baby’s Online Live Database (BOLD), which extends the scope of the accessible participant pool, simplifies its management, and enables participant recruitment for longitudinal studies. Through BOLD, researchers can conduct online recruitment of participants preregistered to BOLD simply by specifying their attributes, such as gender and age, and direct the participants to dedicated webpages for each study. Moreover, BOLD handles participant recruitment and reward payment, thereby freeing researchers from the labor of participant management. BOLD also allows researchers the opportunity to access data that were collected from participants in previous research studies. This enables researchers to carry out longitudinal analyses at a relatively low cost. To make BOLD widely accessible, a consortium was formed within the Japan Society of Baby Science, where members from diverse research groups discussed the blueprint of this system. Once in full-scaled operation, BOLD is expected to serve as a platform for various types of online studies and facilitate international collaboration among developmental scientists in the near future.

DOI： 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.729302

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Authorship：Lead author,　Corresponding author   Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：Wiley  

DOI： 10.1111/sode.12556

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Other Link： https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full-xml/10.1111/sode.12556

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：MDPI AG  

We aimed to describe parental presence policy and telemedicine use in Japanese neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) before and during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. This cross-sectional study was performed through an online survey in 110 level III units from 19 November 2020 to 18 December 2020. Nurses’ evaluation of the current situation (during COVID-19) was compared with their retrospective pre-COVID-19 (December 2019) evaluation. Responses were received from 52 NICUs distributed across all regions in Japan. The median allowed parental presence time decreased from 12 h to 1 h, and 29 NICUs allowed entry of parents simultaneously during COVID-19. There was an increase in the number of units providing telemedicine through telephone and online visits during COVID-19 compared to that before COVID-19 (from 2% to 19%). The hybrid design NICUs, with 11–89% of beds in single-patient rooms, allowed a longer parental presence time in the NICUs than those with ≥90% of beds in multi-bed rooms. The number of units implementing kangaroo care decreased during COVID-19 compared to that before COVID-19. The need for telemedicine increased among Japanese NICUs to mitigate the adverse effect of parental restriction and limited physical contact due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

DOI： 10.3390/children8070590

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Authorship：Lead author,　Corresponding author   Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：Springer Science and Business Media LLC  

<title>Abstract</title>Claims to supernatural power have been used as a basis for authority in a wide range of societies, but little is known about developmental origins of the link between supernatural power and worldly authority. Here, we show that 12- to 16-month-old infants expect agents exhibiting counterintuitive capacities to win out in a two-way standoff over a contested resource. Infants watched two agents gain a reward using either physically intuitive or physically counterintuitive methods, the latter involving simple forms of levitation or teleportation. Infants looked longer, indicating surprise, when the physically intuitive agent subsequently outcompeted a physically counterintuitive agent in securing a reward. Control experiments indicated that infants’ expectations were not simply motived by the efficiency of agents in pursuing their goals, but specifically the deployment of counterintuitive capacities. This suggests that the link between supernatural power and worldly authority has early origins in development.

DOI： 10.1038/s41598-021-89821-0

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Other Link： http://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-89821-0

Authorship：Lead author,　Corresponding author   Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：Springer Science and Business Media LLC  

DOI： 10.1007/s10339-021-01028-3

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Other Link： https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10339-021-01028-3/fulltext.html

Authorship：Lead author,　Corresponding author   Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：Elsevier BV  

Preferring fair resource distribution reflects human cooperative nature, but its neural correlates in young children are not well known. We investigated the neural mechanism of egalitarian resource sharing in five-to six-year-old children to examine the possibility that early egalitarianism requires behavioral control to inhibit selfish impulses. In Study 1, children participated in a behavioral control task in which they either needed or did not need to inhibit their impulsive behavioral responses in order to quickly press a key. They subsequently allocated their resources to strangers by choosing a 2:2, 3:1, or 4:0 distribution. The activation of the dorsolateral prefrontal (dlpfc) regions was recorded by functional near-infrared spectroscopy measurements. We found that dlpfc regions were activated during cognitive tasks involving behavioral control and also during the equal, but not the more selfish, allocations. There was no difference among these allocations. The results did not show evidence of an ego depletion effect on children's sharing behavior, which predicts that children will share less after their behavioral control is taxed in a cognitive task (i.e., their self-control resource depleted). Study 2 showed no activation of the dlpfc regions during third-party equal allocations in which there was no conflict between fairness and self-interest in the distribution of resources. Overall, we showed that costly equal sharing in young children relates to the activation of dlpfc regions. These results suggest that costly equal allocation has a common neural basis with behavioral control in five-to six-year-old children, implying that early egalitarian sharing requires dealing with conflicts between maximizing self-interest and following moral norms.

DOI： 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2021.107787

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：Research Square  

<title>Abstract</title>
<bold><italic>Background: </italic></bold>A novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, has spread widely throughout the world. To reduce the spread of infection, children are prevented from going to school and have fewer opportunities for in-person communication. Although the pandemic has affected the everyday lives of children, its impact on their development is unknown. This cross-sectional study compared Japanese children’s socio-emotional behaviors and skills for operating digital devices before and during the pandemic.<bold><italic>Methods:</italic></bold> Parents completed a web-based questionnaire before and during the pandemic for children aged 0-9. Children’s socio-emotional development in the context of everyday life was assessed using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). Children’s basic touch interaction skills to operate digital devices and skills to use functions of digital devices were also measured.<bold><italic>Results:</italic></bold> The results indicated that during the pandemic, children were more prosocial, experienced more problems in their peer relationships, and had better digital skills, but no differences were found in emotional symptoms; conduct problems; and hyperactivity between, before, and during the pandemic. The differences in digital skills were explained by the duration of children’s media use.<bold><italic>Conclusions:</italic></bold> Overall, our results suggest that the pandemic may have an immediate impact on children’s socio-emotional behaviors and digital skills.<bold>Trial registration:</bold> Registration type: OSF Preregistration.Date registered: April 27, 2020.Registration from osf.io/tfh4k.(https://osf.io/c7p6b)

DOI： 10.21203/rs.3.rs-55554/v1

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Other Link： https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-55554/v1.html

Publisher：Center for Open Science  

<p>A novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, has spread widely throughout the world. To reduce the spread of infection, children are prevented from going to school and have fewer opportunities for in-person communication. Although the pandemic has impacted the everyday lives of children, its impact on their development is unknown. This cross-sectional study compared Japanese children’s socio-emotional behaviors before and during the pandemic. Parents completed a web-based questionnaire before and during the pandemic for children ages 4-9. Children’s socio-emotional development in an everyday context was assessed using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). The results indicated that during the pandemic, children were more prosocial and experienced more problems in their peer relationships, but no differences were found in emotional symptoms, conduct problems, hyperactivity between before and during the pandemic. Overall, our results suggest the pandemic may have immediate impact on children’s socio-emotional behaviors. We discussed the results in terms of behavioral immune system.</p>

DOI： 10.31234/osf.io/6b4vh

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：Informa UK Limited  

DOI： 10.1080/17405629.2019.1628737

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Authorship：Lead author,　Corresponding author   Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

DOI： 10.1098/rspb.2019.1674

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Authorship：Lead author,　Corresponding author   Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

DOI： 10.1016/j.jecp.2019.104672

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Authorship：Corresponding author   Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

DOI： 10.1016/j.infbeh.2018.12.002

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Authorship：Lead author,　Corresponding author   Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：Springer Science and Business Media LLC  

DOI： 10.1186/s13104-017-2972-3

PubMed

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Other Link： http://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13104-017-2972-3/fulltext.html

Authorship：Lead author,　Corresponding author   Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE  

Understanding the referent of other's utterance by referring the contextual information helps in smooth communication. Although this pragmatic referential process can be observed even in infants, its underlying mechanism and relative abilities remain unclear. This study aimed to comprehend the background of the referential process by investigating whether the phonological loop affected the referent assignment. A total of 76 children (43 girls) aged 3-5 years participated in a reference assignment task in which an experimenter asked them to answer explicit (e.g., "What color is this?") and ambiguous (e.g., "What about this?") questions about colorful objects. The phonological loop capacity was measured by using the forward digit span task in which children were required to repeat the numbers as an experimenter uttered them. The results showed that the scores of the forward digit span task positively predicted correct response to explicit questions and part of the ambiguous questions. That is, the phonological loop capacity did not have effects on referent assignment in response to ambiguous questions that were asked after a topic shift of the explicit questions and thus required a backward reference to the preceding explicit questions to detect the intent of the current ambiguous questions. These results suggest that although the phonological loop capacity could overtly enhance the storage of verbal information, it does not seem to directly contribute to the pragmatic referential process, which might require further social cognitive processes.

DOI： 10.1371/journal.pone.0187368

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Authorship：Lead author,　Corresponding author   Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：FRONTIERS MEDIA SA  

Not only responding to direct social actions toward themselves, infants also pay attention to relevant information from third-party interactions. However, it is unclear whether and how infants recognize the structure of these interactions. The current study aimed to investigate how infants' observation of third-party attentional relationships influence their subsequent gaze following. Nine-month-old, 1-year-old, and 1.5-year-old infants (N = 72, 37 girls) observed video clips in which a female actor gazed at one of two toys after she and her partner either silently faced each other (face-to-face condition) or looked in opposite directions (back-to-back condition). An eye tracker was used to record the infants' looking behavior (e.g., looking time, looking frequency). The analyses revealed that younger infants followed the actor's gaze toward the target object in both conditions, but this was not the case for the 1.5-year-old infants in the back-to-back condition. Furthermore, we found that infants' gaze following could be negatively predicted by their expectation of the partner's response to the actor's head turn (i.e., they shift their gaze toward the partner immediately after they realize that the actor's head will turn). These findings suggested that the sensitivity to the difference in knowledge and attentional states in the second year of human life could be extended to third-party interactions, even without any direct involvement in the situation. Additionally, a spontaneous concern with the epistemic gap between self and other, as well as between others, develops by this age. These processes might be considered part of the fundamental basis for human communication.

DOI： 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.02065

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Authorship：Lead author,　Corresponding author   Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE  

Inferring the epistemic states of others is considered to be an essential requirement for humans to communicate; however, the developmental trajectory of this ability is unclear. The aim of the current study was to determine developmental trends in this ability by using pointing behavior as a dependent measure. Infants aged 13 to 18 months (n = 32, 16 females) participated in the study. The experiment consisted of two phases. In the Shared Experience Phase, both the participant and the experimenter experienced (played with) an object, and the participant experienced a second object while the experimenter was absent. In the Pointing Phase, the participant was seated on his/her mother's lap, facing the experimenter, and the same two objects from the Shared Experience Phase were presented side-by-side behind the experimenter. The participants' spontaneous pointing was analyzed from video footage. While the analysis of the Shared Experience Phase suggested that there was no significant difference in the duration of the participants' visual attention to the two objects, the participants pointed more frequently to the object that could be considered "new'' for the experimenter (in Experiment 1). This selective pointing was not observed when the experimenter could be considered unfamiliar with both of the objects (in Experiment 2). These findings suggest that infants in this age group spontaneously point, presumably to inform about an object, reflecting the partner's attentional and knowledge states.

DOI： 10.1371/journal.pone.0107579

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Language：Japanese  

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Language：Japanese   Publisher：電子情報通信学会  

CiNii Books

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Language：Japanese   Publisher：一般社団法人電子情報通信学会  

To achieve successful communication, the inference of others&#039; cognitive environment is essential. However, the ontogenesis of such behavior still remains unclear. The current study examined infants&#039; informing behavior through investigating their spontaneous pointing in an informing context. Results suggested that infants in the first half of their second year have already started their spontaneous &quot;teaching&quot; reflecting their ability to track shared experience with others.

CiNii Books

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Language：Japanese   Publisher：一般社団法人電子情報通信学会  

In two experiments, we compared the tendency of moral judgment of adults and 5 and 6-year-olds. Specifically, through investigating how participants evaluated the valents of actions which embedded in group activity, we attempted to clarify how adults and children resolved the dilemma with responsibility attribution for collective activity: who should we blame in collective activity. Mainly, we investigated developmental change of judgment based on the contact principle. In experimental stimuli, a proposer suggested task-solution to a performer and the performer agreed on it and made an action according to the idea. In one condition, the proposer helped the performer do the challenge, and in the other condition the proposer did not help the performer. When asked to judge which person was worse, the proposer or the performer, adults and 6-year-old advocated the proposer equally in both condition, whereas 5-year-olds advocated the proposer strongly in the former condition but in the latter condition equally. In the course of development, the ability to consider the importance of communication or consensus on moral judgment might follow the overcome of focusing too much on the contact principle.

CiNii Books

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