US children’s books are a rich source of information about mental states (Dyer, Shatz, & Wellman, 2000). Examining books from other cultures can determine whether and how such information is conveyed by other languages. Forty US and 40 Japanese picture books for preschoolers were compared. The books were coded for references to mental state via expressions in the texts. The sentential contexts of those expressions were further coded for individual or group-oriented connotations. Results revealed that mental state terms were highly frequent in both US and Japanese books. In addition, 9 of the 11 most frequent terms were the same across the two languages. Finally, the two sets of books did not differ significantly in the frequency of terms that had individual or group-oriented connotations. These findings suggest that children’s books convey not just culture-specific but universally useful information about mental states.

Graduating students sometimes struggle to match the skills they have learned in college with qualifications in job advertisements. In the present study, we assessed the extent to which employers and students agree on which skills are essential in new hires, and we tested whether the skills and knowledge students think are important for postcollege success can be influenced by the way the psychology major is framed. Participants viewed a 1-min video where they heard a target student describe her path through the psychology major framed in one of two ways: either as a list of courses she took or as a set of learning goals she achieved. Participants then responded to two open-ended questions about what they should focus on now for postcollege success, as well as how they thought a potential employer would evaluate the target student. Results revealed some overlap between students' responses and those from a nationwide sample of employers. Conversely, some skills that employers consider essential were rarely mentioned by students. Further, when participants heard the major described as a list of courses they were more likely to note "professionalism" as an important skill to hone for postcollege success than when they heard the major described as a set of learning outcomes. These results suggest that a relatively small number of students know some of the skills that employers want in new hires, and the way the major is framed to students by faculty and advisors might influence the particular skills and knowledge on which they focus.

A children’s museum is a place to explore and play. It allows children and caregivers to choose among a variety of exhibits. We were interested in visitors’ choices to play in exhibits that included activities typed for their gender. We observed 71 family groups for 15 minutes each and noted the extent to which children and caregivers chose exhibits typed for their gender. We found that, for the majority of the time during our observation, women, men, and boys chose exhibits that included activities not typed for their gender, whereas girls spent the majority of the time during our observation at exhibits that included activities typed for their gender. These findings suggest that museums may allow for a kind of freedom from certain expectations for children’s play.