The present contribution aims at presenting an assessment tool (i.e., the TALK-assessment) built to evaluate the language development and school readiness of Italian preschoolers before they enter primary school, and its predictive validity for the children's reading and writing skills at the end of the first year of primary school. The early…

The reliability and validity of the Children's Social Understanding Scale (CSUS) was further assessed by examining fathers' as well as mothers' reports of children's social understanding, along with behavioural measures of children's mental state understanding. 112 families with children aged 38 to 64 months participated with both parents filling…

The Student Oral Language Observation Matrix (SOLOM) is an assessment of oral language skills. The aim of this study was to examine psychometric properties of the SOLOM for preschoolers through (a) use of internal consistency methods to assess the reliability of the scores from the SOLOM and (b) examination of criterion-related validity by…

Bilingual children's dominance can predict a variety of language and cognitive outcomes. The purpose of this study was to test the validity of parents' classifications of 3- to 6-year-old bilingual children's dominance against relative receptive vocabulary scores. In Study 1, the parents' classifications of Mandarin-English bilingual children's…

When conducting classroom observations, researchers are often confronted with the decision of whether to conduct observations live or by using pre-recorded video. The present study focuses on comparing and contrasting observations of live and video administrations of the Classroom Assessment Scoring System-PreK (CLASS-PreK). Associations between…

There is empirical evidence to suggest that oral language and vocabulary on entering kindergarten are the best predictors of later reading success. Identifying skills that are predictive of later achievement using psychometrically sound measurement methods is a necessary component of early intervention efforts. Currently, there are limited methods…

Currently, the most widely used direct assessment of motivation orientation for preschoolers has little to no research on its reliability and validity. This study examined the test-retest reliability and concurrent and predictive validity of this direct assessment. Results highlight potential limitations of this measure in capturing motivation…

The Emotion Matching Task (EMT; Izard, Haskins, Schultz, Trentacosta, & King, 2003) was developed to assess emotion knowledge in preschoolers and was demonstrated to show adequate convergent and predictive validity in an American sample (Morgan, Izard, & King, 2010). In light of the need for valid measures for assessing emotion…

Head Start is a national program that aims to promote school readiness by enhancing the social and cognitive development of children through the provision of educational, health, nutritional, social, and other services to enrolled children and families. The program places special emphasis on helping preschoolers develop the reading, language,…

"Overgeneral memory" refers to difficulty retrieving specific autobiographical memories and is consistently associated with depression and/or trauma. The present study developed a downward extension of the Autobiographical Memory Test (AMT; Williams & Broadbent, 1986) given the need to document normative developmental changes in…

Preschoolers, as a group, are highly attuned to causality, and this attunement is known to facilitate memory, learning, and problem solving. However, recent work reveals substantial individual variability in the strength of children's "causal stance," as demonstrated by their curiosity about and preference for new causal information. In…

Language skills developed during preschool contribute strongly to later reading and academic achievement. Effective preschool assessment and intervention should focus on core components of language development, specifically oral language skills. The Early Language and Literacy Individual Growth and Development Indicators (IGDIs) are a set of…

Language skills developed during preschool contribute strongly to later reading and academic achievement. Effective preschool assessment and intervention should focus on core components of language development, specifically oral language skills. The Early Language and Literacy Individual Growth and Development Indicators (IGDIs) are a set of…

The preschool years are a critical time to identify and treat early emotional or behavioral problems. Universal screening can be used to identify emotional and behavioral risk in preschoolers and fits well within current service delivery frameworks. This criterion-related validity study examined the use of a brief teacher-rated screener, the…

The purpose of the study was to examine the psychometric properties of the "Preschool Language Scale-4" (PLS-4) with a sample of English-speaking Hispanic and European American children who attended Head Start programs. Participants were 440 children between the ages of 3 and 5 years (52% male; 86% Hispanic and 14% European American).…