Although a sizeable body of research has examined children's memory for stressful prior experiences, relatively few studies have experimentally manipulated stress during a to-be-remembered event to draw causal inferences about the effects of stress, especially across wide age ranges. We exposed children and adolescents to a more or a less arousing version of the Trier Social Stress Test-Modified (TSST-M), a widely used laboratory stress task. Two weeks later, we tested their memory for what happened. Interviewers behaved in a supportive or non-supportive manner. In adolescents, those who completed the high-arousal TSST-M provided fewer correct responses to recognition questions and fewer incorrect responses to misleading questions for which any answer would have been incorrect, compared to those who completed the lower-arousal TSST-M. Thus, arousal seemed to have reduced the adolescents' willingness to answer questions rather than having influenced their memory per se. In children, across TSST-M conditions, greater physiological arousal during the TSST-M predicted enhanced recall. Finally, interviewer support reduced the amount of factual information provided in free recall but increased correct responses to misleading questions. Results highlight the complex ways in which event stress and interviewer demeanour shape recounting of prior experiences across development.

Few studies have investigated how stress affects eyewitness identification capabilities across development, and no studies have investigated whether retrieval context in conjunction with stress affects accuracy. In this study, one hundred fifty-nine 7- to 8- and 12- to 14-year-olds completed a high- or low-stress laboratory protocol during which they interacted with a confederate. Two weeks later, they attempted to identify the confederate in a photographic lineup. The lineup administrator behaved in either a supportive or a nonsupportive manner. Participants who experienced the high-stress event and were questioned by a supportive interviewer were most accurate in rejecting target-absent lineups. Results have implications for debates about effects of stress on eyewitness recall, how best to elicit accurate identifications in children, and developmental changes in episodic mnemonic processes.

This single-case research study examined whether interactive touch screen apps enriched with Theory of Mind (ToM)—enhancing language would promote ToM skills in preschoolers. Six typically developing girls between the ages of 46- and 52- months participated in multiple sessions across the three phases of the study: In baseline, participants played games without voice-overs; in the original treatment phase, participants played games with embedded voice-overs; finally, in the modified treatment phase, participants first played games with embedded voice-overs, then engaged in the researcher-led conversation. All sessions across the three phases concluded with ToM assessments: two measures based on a continuous scale. The first measure included three tasks targeting earlier-developing ToM skills (diverse desires, diverse beliefs, and knowledge access), and the other measure had two tasks that assessed a later-developing ToM competency, false belief understanding. Results showed that apps with ToM-embedded language improved children’s earlier-developing ToM skills (i.e., understanding that people can have different desires, beliefs, and knowledge access) in the phase where an adult-led conversation also followed voice-over-enriched app play. Apps with ToM-embedded language without a follow-up discussion were only marginally effective in promoting the earlier-emerging ToM skills. Across the conditions, apps were not effective in promoting children’s later-developing ToM skills—false belief understanding. Our findings indicate that incorporating ToM conducive language in mobile apps can promote ToM development in preschoolers, especially when supplemented by an adult-led conversation.

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