Nadia Chernyak
Biographic Data
| ID | 4228375 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Nadia Chernyak |
| GIVEN NAMES | Nadia |
| FAMILY NAME | Chernyak |
| SIGNATURE | CHERNYAK N |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Irvine |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3061-0523 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 27 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 15 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
The power of success stories: Social mobility beliefs of children and adults
Others’ requests may dampen the desire to do good: The effect of requests on children’s prosocial motivation across five cultures
There exists cultural variation in how people react to prosocial obligations, but we still know little about when these differences emerge in development and how they can be explained. We investigated this in a study with 6- to 11-year-old children ( N = 686) in five cultural contexts. Children listened to scenarios about spontaneous and requested (within-subjects) helping and sharing. They rated requested scenarios as less desirable and less sat…
Symbolic counting skills promote numerically sensitive intolerance for selfishness
One of the most pervasive human interests is the acquisition of norms surrounding fairness-young children care about equality, enforce it in their behavior, and punish those who do not behave accordingly. Although the fact that children care about fairness is well documented, less is understood about the types of fairness norms that children endorse. In this work, across two studies with preschool-aged children (ages 2.5-6; N = 123), we document …
Using numbers strategically: Proportional reasoning induces wealth in-group bias in an equity task
Prior work in cognitive development has shown a strong association between our numerical cognition abilities and our abilities to engage in equity-based social evaluation. At the same time, work in social development has found that children generally prefer wealthier others and prefer in-group members. Integrating these two perspectives, we investigated whether children’s developing proportional reasoning skills might help overcome their in-group…
The Relationship Between Parenting Styles, Beliefs in Free‐Will, and 4–8‐Year‐Old Childrens' Beliefs About Fairness and Rectification of Social Inequality
Recent work suggests that young children develop strong intuitions about inequitable resource distribution when it arises due to fair and unfair procedures (merit, structural, or random chance). Here, we investigated an understudied form of inequality: one that arises due to a single suboptimal choice (referred to as self‐inflicted inequality). Four‐to‐eight‐year‐old children ( n = 80) were exposed to two trials in which they watched a character …
It was Gendered Before, so why not Again? US Young Adults' Expectations for Family Labor
In the present work, we investigated how young adults' perceptions of their own family's inequality in the past plays a role in shaping their expectations for future family life. Across 2 studies ( N = 763), we investigated US heterosexual young adults (18-30 years; 65% White; 48.6% women, 47.8% men, and 3.5% non-binary) about their future expectations for household labor as predicted by (a) past parental division, (b) gender ideology, (c) evalua…
Who's the winner? Children's math learning in competitive and collaborative scenarios
Games are frequently used to promote math learning, yet the competitive and collaborative contexts introduced by games may exacerbate gender differences. In this study, 1st and 2nd grade children in the U.S. (ages 5–8; N = 274; 70% White, 15% Asian, 2% Black, 1% Native American, 14% mixed or other race; 17% Hispanic) played either a competitive, collaborative, or solo game to learn about a challenging novel math concept: proportion. Overall, both…
A counting intervention promotes fair sharing in preschoolers
Recent work has probed the developmental mechanisms that promote fair sharing. This work investigated 2.5- to 5.5-year-olds’ (N = 316; 52% female; 79% White; data collected 2016–2018) sharing behavior in relation to three cognitive correlates: number knowledge, working memory, and cognitive control. In contrast to working memory and cognitive control, number knowledge was uniquely associated with fair sharing even after controlling for the other …
Giving a larger amount or a larger proportion: Stimulus format impacts children’s social evaluations
Young children show remarkably sophisticated abilities to evaluate others. Yet their abilities to engage in proportional moral evaluation undergoes protracted development. Namely, young children evaluate someone who shares absolutely more as being "nicer" than someone who shares proportionally more (e.g., sharing 3-out-of-6 is nicer than sharing 2-out-of-3, because 3 > 2, even though 3/6 < 2/3), whereas adults think the opposite. We investigate t…
The cultural roots of free will beliefs: How Singaporean and U.S. Children judge and explain possibilities for action in interpersonal contexts
Making sense of human actions involves thinking about both endogenous influences (the internal mental states of agents) and exogenous influences (social, moral, and interpersonal constraints). Culture impacts how we weight the relative causal influence of these two influences. To examine these cultural influences in depth, we asked 147 4-11-year-olds in 3 cultural groups (Singaporean Chinese, Singaporean Malay, and U.S. Americans) about the possi…
Number-based sharing: Conversation about quantity in the context of resource distribution
Training preschoolers’ prospective abilities through conversation about the extended self
The ability to act on behalf of one's future self is related to uniquely human abilities such as planning, delay of gratification, and goal attainment. Although prospection develops rapidly during early childhood, little is known about the mechanisms that support its development. Here we explored whether encouraging children to talk about their extended selves (self outside the present context) boosts their prospective abilities. Preschoolers (N …
Numerical cognition explains age-related changes in third-party fairness
Young children share fairly and expect others to do the same. Yet little is known about the underlying cognitive mechanisms that support fairness. We investigated whether children's numerical competencies are linked with their sharing behavior. Preschoolers (aged 2.5-5.5) participated in third-party resource allocation tasks in which they split a set of resources between 2 puppets. Children's numerical competence was assessed using the Give-N tas…
Equal But Not Always Fair: Value‐laden Sharing in Preschool‐aged Children
Prior work has shown that preschoolers divide resources fairly and expect others to do the same. The majority of research, however, has focused on how children make distributions with respect to number. Here we explore whether preschoolers attend to the value of the objects being shared. We presented four‐year‐olds and five‐year‐olds with two puppets and four stickers of different values to split between them. Our central question was whether chi…
Being excluded by one means being excluded by all: Perceiving exclusion from inclusive others during one-person social exclusion
Numerical cognition explains age-related changes in third-party fairness
Young children share fairly and expect others to do the same. Yet little is known about the underlying cognitive mechanisms that support fairness. We investigated whether children's numerical competencies are linked with their sharing behavior. Preschoolers (aged 2.5-5.5) participated in third-party resource allocation tasks in which they split a set of resources between 2 puppets. Children's numerical competence was assessed using the Give-N tas…
Being excluded by one means being excluded by all: Perceiving exclusion from inclusive others during one-person social exclusion
Equal But Not Always Fair: Value‐laden Sharing in Preschool‐aged Children
Prior work has shown that preschoolers divide resources fairly and expect others to do the same. The majority of research, however, has focused on how children make distributions with respect to number. Here we explore whether preschoolers attend to the value of the objects being shared. We presented four‐year‐olds and five‐year‐olds with two puppets and four stickers of different values to split between them. Our central question was whether chi…
Training preschoolers’ prospective abilities through conversation about the extended self
The ability to act on behalf of one's future self is related to uniquely human abilities such as planning, delay of gratification, and goal attainment. Although prospection develops rapidly during early childhood, little is known about the mechanisms that support its development. Here we explored whether encouraging children to talk about their extended selves (self outside the present context) boosts their prospective abilities. Preschoolers (N …
The cultural roots of free will beliefs: How Singaporean and U.S. Children judge and explain possibilities for action in interpersonal contexts
Making sense of human actions involves thinking about both endogenous influences (the internal mental states of agents) and exogenous influences (social, moral, and interpersonal constraints). Culture impacts how we weight the relative causal influence of these two influences. To examine these cultural influences in depth, we asked 147 4-11-year-olds in 3 cultural groups (Singaporean Chinese, Singaporean Malay, and U.S. Americans) about the possi…
Number-based sharing: Conversation about quantity in the context of resource distribution
Giving a larger amount or a larger proportion: Stimulus format impacts children’s social evaluations
Young children show remarkably sophisticated abilities to evaluate others. Yet their abilities to engage in proportional moral evaluation undergoes protracted development. Namely, young children evaluate someone who shares absolutely more as being "nicer" than someone who shares proportionally more (e.g., sharing 3-out-of-6 is nicer than sharing 2-out-of-3, because 3 > 2, even though 3/6 < 2/3), whereas adults think the opposite. We investigate t…
Being excluded by one means being excluded by all: Perceiving exclusion from inclusive others during one-person social exclusion
Equal But Not Always Fair: Value‐laden Sharing in Preschool‐aged Children
Prior work has shown that preschoolers divide resources fairly and expect others to do the same. The majority of research, however, has focused on how children make distributions with respect to number. Here we explore whether preschoolers attend to the value of the objects being shared. We presented four‐year‐olds and five‐year‐olds with two puppets and four stickers of different values to split between them. Our central question was whether chi…
Numerical cognition explains age-related changes in third-party fairness
Young children share fairly and expect others to do the same. Yet little is known about the underlying cognitive mechanisms that support fairness. We investigated whether children's numerical competencies are linked with their sharing behavior. Preschoolers (aged 2.5-5.5) participated in third-party resource allocation tasks in which they split a set of resources between 2 puppets. Children's numerical competence was assessed using the Give-N tas…
Training preschoolers’ prospective abilities through conversation about the extended self
The ability to act on behalf of one's future self is related to uniquely human abilities such as planning, delay of gratification, and goal attainment. Although prospection develops rapidly during early childhood, little is known about the mechanisms that support its development. Here we explored whether encouraging children to talk about their extended selves (self outside the present context) boosts their prospective abilities. Preschoolers (N …
Number-based sharing: Conversation about quantity in the context of resource distribution
The cultural roots of free will beliefs: How Singaporean and U.S. Children judge and explain possibilities for action in interpersonal contexts
Making sense of human actions involves thinking about both endogenous influences (the internal mental states of agents) and exogenous influences (social, moral, and interpersonal constraints). Culture impacts how we weight the relative causal influence of these two influences. To examine these cultural influences in depth, we asked 147 4-11-year-olds in 3 cultural groups (Singaporean Chinese, Singaporean Malay, and U.S. Americans) about the possi…
Giving a larger amount or a larger proportion: Stimulus format impacts children’s social evaluations
Young children show remarkably sophisticated abilities to evaluate others. Yet their abilities to engage in proportional moral evaluation undergoes protracted development. Namely, young children evaluate someone who shares absolutely more as being "nicer" than someone who shares proportionally more (e.g., sharing 3-out-of-6 is nicer than sharing 2-out-of-3, because 3 > 2, even though 3/6 < 2/3), whereas adults think the opposite. We investigate t…
A counting intervention promotes fair sharing in preschoolers
Recent work has probed the developmental mechanisms that promote fair sharing. This work investigated 2.5- to 5.5-year-olds’ (N = 316; 52% female; 79% White; data collected 2016–2018) sharing behavior in relation to three cognitive correlates: number knowledge, working memory, and cognitive control. In contrast to working memory and cognitive control, number knowledge was uniquely associated with fair sharing even after controlling for the other …
Who's the winner? Children's math learning in competitive and collaborative scenarios
Games are frequently used to promote math learning, yet the competitive and collaborative contexts introduced by games may exacerbate gender differences. In this study, 1st and 2nd grade children in the U.S. (ages 5–8; N = 274; 70% White, 15% Asian, 2% Black, 1% Native American, 14% mixed or other race; 17% Hispanic) played either a competitive, collaborative, or solo game to learn about a challenging novel math concept: proportion. Overall, both…
Using numbers strategically: Proportional reasoning induces wealth in-group bias in an equity task
Prior work in cognitive development has shown a strong association between our numerical cognition abilities and our abilities to engage in equity-based social evaluation. At the same time, work in social development has found that children generally prefer wealthier others and prefer in-group members. Integrating these two perspectives, we investigated whether children’s developing proportional reasoning skills might help overcome their in-group…
The Relationship Between Parenting Styles, Beliefs in Free‐Will, and 4–8‐Year‐Old Childrens' Beliefs About Fairness and Rectification of Social Inequality
Recent work suggests that young children develop strong intuitions about inequitable resource distribution when it arises due to fair and unfair procedures (merit, structural, or random chance). Here, we investigated an understudied form of inequality: one that arises due to a single suboptimal choice (referred to as self‐inflicted inequality). Four‐to‐eight‐year‐old children ( n = 80) were exposed to two trials in which they watched a character …
It was Gendered Before, so why not Again? US Young Adults' Expectations for Family Labor
In the present work, we investigated how young adults' perceptions of their own family's inequality in the past plays a role in shaping their expectations for future family life. Across 2 studies ( N = 763), we investigated US heterosexual young adults (18-30 years; 65% White; 48.6% women, 47.8% men, and 3.5% non-binary) about their future expectations for household labor as predicted by (a) past parental division, (b) gender ideology, (c) evalua…
The power of success stories: Social mobility beliefs of children and adults
Others’ requests may dampen the desire to do good: The effect of requests on children’s prosocial motivation across five cultures
There exists cultural variation in how people react to prosocial obligations, but we still know little about when these differences emerge in development and how they can be explained. We investigated this in a study with 6- to 11-year-old children ( N = 686) in five cultural contexts. Children listened to scenarios about spontaneous and requested (within-subjects) helping and sharing. They rated requested scenarios as less desirable and less sat…
Symbolic counting skills promote numerically sensitive intolerance for selfishness
One of the most pervasive human interests is the acquisition of norms surrounding fairness-young children care about equality, enforce it in their behavior, and punish those who do not behave accordingly. Although the fact that children care about fairness is well documented, less is understood about the types of fairness norms that children endorse. In this work, across two studies with preschool-aged children (ages 2.5-6; N = 123), we document …
Psychology (13 works) · Developmental psychology (10 works) · Child and Animal Learning Development (9 works) · Social Psychology (8 works) · Cognitive and developmental aspects of mathematical skills (7 works) · Cognitive psychology (6 works) · Social Psychology (6 works) · Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development (3 works) · Cognition (3 works) · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment (3 works)