Stuart Marcovitch

Dr. Stuart Marcovitch studies cognitive development, particularly the conscious control of behavior in childhood and across the lifespan. The DUCK Lab (Development and Understanding of Children's Knowledge) is co-directed by Dr. Marcovitch and Dr. Janet Boseovski.

There are 40 included publications by Stuart Marcovitch :

TitleDateViewsBrief Description
The A-not-B error: Results from a logistic meta-analysis 1999 9046 A meta-analysis of the A-not-B error was conducted using logistic regression on studies conducted before September 1997 (107 data points). An earlier meta-analysis by Wellman, Cross, and Bartsch revealed that age, delay between hiding and retrieval, ...
African American and European American Mothers' Beliefs About Negative Emotions and Emotion Socialization Practices 2012 4630 Objective . The authors examined mothers’ beliefs about their children's negative emotions and their emotion socialization practices. Design . A total of 65 African American and 137 European American mothers of 5-year-old children reported their beli...
Cognitive and emotional processes as predictors of a successful transition into school 2017 1627 Research Findings: The aim of this research was to delineate developmental processes that contribute to early school success. To achieve this aim, we examined emotion regulation, executive functioning, emotion knowledge, and metacognition at ages 3 a...
A Compreensão da Gratidão e Teoria da Mente em Crianças de 5 anos 2012 1966 Examinaram-se relações entre compreensão da gratidão (GRA) e desenvolvimento de uma teoria da mente (TOM) com 228 crianças norteamericanas (53% meninas) de 5 anos. Testaram-se as seguintes hipóteses: (a) não há diferença de sexo em GRA ou TOM, (b) as...
The development of executive function in early childhood 2003 49908 According to the Cognitive Complexity and Control (CCC) theory, the development of executive function can be understood in terms of age-related increases in the maximum complexity of the rules children can formulate and use when solving problems. Thi...
Developmental Dynamics of Emotion and Cognition Processes in Preschoolers 2012 1955 Dynamic relations during the preschool years across processes of control and understanding in the domains of emotion and cognition were examined. Participants were 263 children (42% non-White) and their mothers who were seen first when the children w...
Differentiating Processes of Control and Understanding in the Early Development of Emotion and Cognition 2012 1926 In this study, we examined the hypothesis that preschoolers' performance on emotion and cognitive tasks is organized into discrete processes of control and understanding within the domains of emotion and cognition. Additionally, we examined the relat...
Do hours spent watching television at age 3 and 4 predict vocabulary and executive functioning at age 5? 2015 1819 We examined the impact of television viewing at ages 3 and 4 on vocabulary and at age 5 on executive functioning in the context of home learning environment and parental scaffolding. Children (N = 263) were seen in the lab when they were 3 years old ...
Early physiological regulation predicts the trajectory of externalizing behaviors across the preschool period 2014 950 Early assessments of children's physiological functioning are shown to predict subsequentdevelopmental outcomes. However, individual changes that occur in the development ofphysiological systems may be associated with the pattern of change in behavio...
The effect of number of A trials on performance on the A-not-B task 2002 3342 The A-not-B error (Piaget, 1954), which occurs when infants search perseveratively on reversal trials in a delayed-response task, is one of the most widely studied phenomena in developmental psychology. Nonetheless, the effect of A-trial experience o...
Electroencephalogram and Heart Rate Measures of Working Memory at 5 and 10 Months of Age 2012 1929 We recorded electroencephalogram (EEG; 6–9 Hz) and heart rate (HR) from infants at 5 and 10 months of age during baseline and performance on the looking A-not-B task of infant working memory (WM). Longitudinal baseline-to-task comparisons revealed WM...
European-American and African-American Mothers' Emotion Socialization Practices Relate Differently to Their Children's Academic and Social-emotional Competence 2012 1023 The current study examines whether the relation between mothers' responses to their children's negative emotions and teachers' reports of children's academic performance and social-emotional competence are similar or different for European-American a...
Goal neglect and working memory capacity in 4- to 6-year-old children 2010 1983 Goal neglect is the phenomenon of failing to execute the momentary demands of a task despite understanding and being able to recall the task instructions. Successful goal maintenance is more likely to occur in adults with high working memory capacity...
A hierarchical competing systems model of the emergence and early development of executive function 2009 2720 The hierarchical competing systems model (HCSM) provides a framework for understanding the emergence and early development of executive function – the cognitive processes underlying the conscious control of behavior – in the context of search for hid...
The hierarchical competing systems model provides a process account of social decision making 2013 794 We applaud Richardson, Mulvey, and Killen’s [2012] application of the hierarchical competing systems model (HCSM) to models of social decision making. The HCSM is a framework of the development of executive function that was formulated to account for...
The influence of number of A trials on 2-years-old’s behavior in Two A-Not-B-Type search tasks: A test of the hierarchical competing systems model 2006 1977 Age-appropriate modifications of the A-not-B task were used to examine 2-year-olds’ search behavior. Several theories predict that A-not-B errors will in-crease as a function of number of A trials. However, the hierarchical competing systems model (M...
Integration of behavioral frequency and intention information in young children’s trait attributions. 2013 2320 Two experiments examined three- to six-year-olds' use of frequency and intention information to make trait attributions and behavioral predictions. In experiment 1, participants were told a story about an actor who behaved positively once or four tim...
Integration of Behavioral Frequency and Intention Information in Young Children's Trait Attributions 2013 1404 Two experiments examined three- to six-year-olds' use of frequency and intention information to make trait attributions and behavioral predictions. In experiment 1, participants were told a story about an actor who behaved positively once or four tim...
Introduction to special issue: “The potential contribution of computational modeling to the study of cognitive development: When, and for what topics?” 2012 1750 As our understanding of cognitive development becomes more sophisticated, and scientists explore how processes operating at many levels of analysis (cultural, social, cognitive, neural, and molecular) work together to yield complex cognitive skills, ...
Is Science Learning Magic? 2012 1834 A review of the book “The Journey From Child to Scientist: Integrating Cognitive Development and the Education Sciences” by Sharon M. Carver and Jeff Shrager.
Linking the Dynamics of Cognitive Control to Individual Differences in Working Memory Capacity: Evidence From Reaching Behavior 2021 400 We used a technique known as reach tracking to investigate how individual differences in working memory capacity (WMC) relate to the functioning of two processes proposed to underlie cognitive control: a threshold adjustment process that temporarily ...
Links between Family Social Status and Preschoolers' Persistence: The Role of Maternal Values and Quality of Parenting 2012 2206 Children who develop persistence in the preschool years are likely to function more effectively during the transition into school. In this study of 231 3-year-old children and their mothers, we examined the relations among family social status, mater...
A longitudinal assessment of the relation between executive function and theory of mind at 3, 4, and 5 years 2015 2999 This longitudinal study contributes to the growing literature on the predictive nature of the relation between executive function (EF) and theory of mind (ToM). A latent variable model was fit to the data acquired from 226 socioeconomically and racia...
Longitudinal Associations Between Children's Understanding of Emotions and Theory of Mind 2011 2338 Theory of mind competence and knowledge of emotions were studied longitudinally in a sample of preschoolers aged 3 (n=263) and 4 (n=244) years. Children were assessed using standard measures of theory of mind and emotion knowledge. Three competing hy...
Maternal Expressive Style and Children's Emotional Development 2012 1906 Maternal expressive styles, based on a combination of positive and negative expressive patterns, were identified at two points in time and related to multiple aspects of preschool children's emotional development. Mother–child pairs from 260 families...
Measures of frontal functioning and the emergence of inhibitory control processes at 10 months of age 2012 2112 During the first year, infants begin to exhibit initial evidence of working memory and inhibitory control in conjunction with substantial maturation of the frontal cortex and corresponding neural circuitry. Currently, relatively little is known about...
Moderate Vagal Withdrawal in 3.5-Year-Old Children is Associated with Optimal Performance on Executive Function Tasks 2010 2079 Vagal tone (measured via respiratory sinus arrhythmia, RSA) and vagal withdrawal (measured by decreases in RSA) have been identified as physiological measures of self-regulation, but little is known how they may relate to the regulation of cognitive ...
Mothers' responses to children's negative emotions and child emotion regulation: The moderating role of vagal suppression 2011 1158 The current study examined the moderating effect of children's cardiac vagal suppression on the association between maternal socialization of negative emotions (supportive and nonsupportive responses) and children's emotion regulation behaviors. One ...
Perception of audiovisual rhythm and its invariance in 4- to 10-month-old infants 2006 2527 This study investigated the perception of complex audiovisual rhythmic patterns in 4-, 6-, 8-, and 10-month-old human infants. In Experiment 1, we first habituated infants to an event in which an object could be seen and heard bouncing in a rhythmic ...
Preschool-aged children's understanding of gratitude: Relations with emotion and mental state knowledge 2012 4144 Developmental precursors to children's early understanding of gratitude were examined. A diverse group of 263 children was tested for emotion and mental state knowledge at ages 3 and 4, and their understanding of gratitude was measured at age 5. Chil...
The relation between maternal emotional support and child physiological regulation across the preschool years 2012 996 Trajectories of baseline RSA (respiratory sinus arrhythmia), an index of reactivity, and vagal withdrawal, an index of regulation, across the preschool period were examined. In addition, maternal emotional support was investigated as a potential time...
The relation of maternal emotional and cognitive support during problem solving to pre-academic skills in preschoolers 2012 1907 Using a sample of 263 mother–child dyads, we examined the extent to which maternal emotional and cognitive support during a joint problem-solving task when children were 3-years-old predicted children's academic skills 1 year later independent of eac...
Reviewing the Development of Self- Concept: Implications for an Enhanced Model 2018 1387 [2017-2018 UNCG University Libraries Open Access Publishing Fund Grant Winner] According to the multiple self-aspects framework, self-concept structure is highly influenced by overlap between self-aspects, and affective spillover may occur when affec...
Self-Reflection and the Cognitive Control of Behavior: Implications for Learning 2008 5182 In this article, we suggest that self-reflection and self-control--studied under the rubric of "executive function" (EF)—have the potential to transform the way in which learning occurs, allowing for the relatively rapid emergence of new behaviors. W...
Sequence learning in infancy: The independent contributions of conditional probability and pair frequency information 2009 2593 The ability to perceive sequences is fundamental to cognition. Previous studies have shown that infants can learn visual sequences as early as 2 months of age and it has been suggested that this ability is mediated by sensitivity to conditional proba...
Shyness and Vocabulary: the Roles of Executive Functioning and Home Environmental Stimulation 2011 2369 Although shyness has often been found to be negatively related to vocabulary, few studies have examined the processes that produce or modify this relation. The present study examined executive functioning skills and home environmental stimulation as ...
Toddlers Benefit from Labeling on an Executive Function Search Task 2011 2242 Although labeling improves executive function (EF) performance in children older than 3 (e.g., Kirkham, Cruess, & Diamond, 2003), the results from studies with younger children have been equivocal (e.g., Sophian & Wellman, 1983). In the present study...
U-shaped functions: Artifact or hallmark of development? 2004 2640 States that the articles in this collection consider one very interesting puzzle of development: U-shaped developmental functions. At some point during development, an organism might exhibit what seems like a regression from its expected developmenta...
Use it or lose it: Examining preschoolers’ difficulty in maintaining and executing a goal 2007 2953 Individuals with low working memory capacity (e.g. preschoolers) are more prone to goal neglect, or a failure to execute a goal even though it is understood. We examined the role of goal neglect in performance on the Dimensional Change Card Sort by i...
Young Children’s Ability to Use Ordinal Labels in a Spatial Search Task 2015 538 The use and understanding of ordinal terms (e.g., “first” and “second”) is a developmental milestone that has been relatively unexplored in the preschool age range. In the present study, 4- and 5-year-olds watched as a reward was placed in one of thr...