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AbstractBackgroundPast research suggests children with Down syndrome often lack awareness of their disability despite the visibility of their condition.MethodThis study used novel tasks to investigate their insight. Twenty‐eight young people with Down syndrome (aged 8–17 years) were recruited, along with control groups of 67 typically developing young people. Three tasks explored the children's awareness of Down syndrome: (a) choice of partner for social activities, (b) sorting photographs and (c) attributing positive or negative descriptors to photographs.ResultsAll participants expressed a preference to engage in social activities with typically developing peers. Most participants with Down syndrome identified with the typically developing person. Even though all participants attributed more positive descriptors to the photographs of the typically developing individuals, they remained positive about themselves.ConclusionThe early awareness of difference shown by young people with Down syndrome suggests this may play an important role in their developing identities.

AbstractChildren's understanding of properties of the earth was investigated by interviewing Asian and white British classmates aged 4−8 years (N = 167). Two issues were explored: whether they held mental models of the earth (Vosniadou & Brewer, 1992) or instead had fragmented knowledge (di Sessa, 1988); and the influence of the children's different cultural backgrounds. Children selected from a set of plastic models and answered forced‐choice questions. Using this methodology, there were no significant differences in the overall performance of Asian and white children after language skills were partialled out. Even young children showed an emerging knowledge of some properties of the earth, but the distributions of their combinations of responses provided no evidence that they had mental models. Instead, these distributions closely resembled those that would be expected if children's knowledge in this domain were fragmented. Possible reasons for the differences between these findings and those of previous research are discussed.

AbstractSocioeconomic status (SES) impacts on both structural and functional brain development in childhood, but how early its effects can be demonstrated is unknown. In this study we measured resting baseline EEG activity in the gamma frequency range in awake 6–9‐month‐olds from areas of East London with high socioeconomic deprivation. Between‐subject comparisons of infants from low‐ and high‐income families revealed significantly lower frontal gamma power in infants from low‐income homes. Similar power differences were found when comparing infants according to maternal occupation, with lower occupational status groups yielding lower power. Infant sleep, maternal education, length of gestation, and birth weight, as well as smoke exposure and bilingualism, did not explain these differences. Our results show that the effects of socioeconomic disparities on brain activity can already be detected in early infancy, potentially pointing to very early risk for language and attention difficulties. This is the first study to reveal region‐selective differences in functional brain development associated with early infancy in low‐income families.