Two-year-olds are vigilant of others' non-verbal cues to credibility.

Data from three experiments provide the first evidence that children, at least as young as age two, are vigilant of others' non-verbal cues to credibility, and flexibly use these cues to facilitate learning. Experiment 1 revealed that 2- and 3-year-olds prefer to learn about objects from someone who appears, through non-verbal cues, to be confident in performing actions on those objects than from someone who appears uncertain when performing actions on those objects. Experiment 2 revealed that when 2-year-olds observe only one model perform a single action, either confidently or unconfidently, they do not use the model's level of confidence in this single instance to influence their learning. Experiment 3 revealed that 2-year-olds will use a single model's level of confidence to guide their learning if they have observed that the model has a history of being either consistently confident or consistently uncertain. These findings reveal that young children selectively alter their learning based on others' non-verbal cues of credibility, and underscore the importance of an early sensitivity to socio-cognitive cues for human learning and development.

Within-family differences in internalizing behaviors: the role of children's perspectives of the mother-child relationship.

The goal of this exploratory, within-family, longitudinal study was to examine whether children's perspectives of the mother-child relationship explained within-family differences in children's responses to a shared family stressor (maternal depressive symptoms) over time. Children (ages 8 to 15 years; N = 68) residing in 34 families were drawn from a general population study in the UK. Predictor variables were assessed at Time 1 and change in internalizing behavior from Time 1 to Time 2 (2 years later) was examined. As children were nested within families, data were analyzed using multilevel modeling, controlling for previous child behavior. Child perspective of the mother-child relationship, in interaction with maternal depressive symptoms, was found to explain within-family differences in internalizing over time. Children with a negative perspective (compared to mothers' perspectives) were the most vulnerable to the adverse effects of maternal depressive symptoms.