When compared to research centered on the executive function development of white, middle-class children, relatively little is known about their non-white, low socioeconomic status peers. In an effort to harmonize how executive functions are measured within under-represented contexts, the present study addresses gaps in the evaluation of everyday…

There are multivariate influences on the development of children's executive function throughout the lifespan and substantial individual differences can be seen as early as when children are 1 and 2 years of age. These individual differences are moderately stable throughout early childhood, but more research is needed to better understand their…

Conceptualizing both economic well-being (EWB) and children's development as multidimensional constructs, the present study examines their association using bioecological developmental theory and structural equation modeling with Zulu children (ages 7-10) in KwaZulu-Natal, a highly impoverished region of South Africa (N = 1,958). Relative EWB…

A close relationship between children's vocabulary size and the grammatical complexity of their speech is well attested but not well understood. The present study used latent change score modeling to examine the dynamic relationships between vocabulary and grammar growth within and across languages in longitudinal data from 90 simultaneous…

Research has identified various domain-general and domain-specific cognitive abilities as predictors of children's individual differences in mathematics achievement. However, research into the predictors of children's individual growth rates, namely between-person differences in within-person change in mathematics achievement is scarce. We…

The structure of the human brain changes in several ways throughout childhood and adolescence. Perhaps the most salient of these changes is the strengthening of white matter tracts that enable distal brain regions to communicate with one another more quickly and efficiently. Here, we sought to understand whether and how white matter changes…

This study identified deficits in executive functioning in pre-adolescent preterms and modeled their role, along with processing speed, in explaining preterm/full-term differences in reading and mathematics. Preterms (less than 1750 g) showed deficits at 11 years on a battery of tasks tapping the three basic executive functions identified by…

Studies of brain development suggest that the increase in risk taking observed during adolescence may be due to insufficient prefrontal executive function compared to a more rapidly developing subcortical motivation system. We examined executive function as assessed by working memory ability in a community sample of youth (n = 387, ages 10 to 12…