For socially appropriate communication, speakers must command a variety of linguistic styles, or registers, that vary according to social context and social relationships. This study examined preschool children's ability to use a speaker's register choice to infer the identity of their addressee. Four-year-olds could draw correct inferences based on Spanish and formal speech, and had limited success with infant-directed and casual styles. Five-year-olds drew appropriate inferences with all 4 styles; moreover, these children demonstrated strong explicit understanding of register, as measured through response justifications. These results demonstrate that children can use language for social judgments that extend beyond evaluating the speaker, and can interpret social implications of language even when not directly engaged in the particular social interaction.

We investigated children's understanding of directed motion events using an Imitation Choice paradigm. Thirty-four children (mean age 33 months) watched a model act out an event containing a manner of motion (hopping or sliding), a motion path (up or down a ramp), and a goal (in or on a bowl). On the child's apparatus, the locations of the goal objects were different from the model so that the child had to choose whether to imitate the path or the goal of the model's event. Children's choice of which component to imitate therefore reflects how they prioritize these event components. Most children showed no bias to imitate the goal of the event, and instead preferred to imitate the model's path at the expense of the model's goal. However, children who spontaneously played with the goal objects during a free-play session showed a diminished path preference, choosing to imitate path and goal components equally often. We suggest that children's prioritization of information within an event depends on how that information is structured within the event itself. Keywordsimitation; event representation; toddler; directed-motion event; goals Imitation is an important tool of social learning that allows humans to replay an event that just occurred in the same way they witnessed it. It is also an important window onto children's representations: successful imitation requires a child to adequately represent the event in question. Moreover, for revealing how they represent and organize information, children's failures are as important as their successes. For example, a child who successfully imitates a model's ultimate goal while failing to imitate the model's process steps (a case of "emulation") most likely has a representation of the event that privileges or prioritizes the goal of the event. And indeed, the dominant finding in the literature is that infants and toddlers are goal-biased in their representations. However, generalizing from children's failures and omissions is not without difficulty. A child who fails too often may simply not have the ability to do the task; a child who fails too rarely may not make representative mistakes. In addition, there is the problem of interpreting null results: children might fail to do something for many reasons. Obviously, systematic patterns of success and failure can be quite meaningful -and many such patterns will be discussed below. However, the method adopted in this paper opts for a different solution, by forcing children to make choices.

He holds degrees in Industrial Engineering (BS, MS), Master of Business Administration (MBA) and in Engineering Education (PhD). Homero has 15 years of international experience working in industry and academia. His research focuses on contemporary and inclusive pedagogical practices, industry-driven competency development in engineering, and understanding the barriers that Latinx and Native Americans have in engineering. Homero has been recognized as a Diggs scholar, a Graduate Academy for Teaching Excellence fellow, a Diversity scholar, a Fulbright scholar and was inducted in the Bouchet Honor Society.