Executive control (EC) emerges in the first year of life, with the ability to inhibit prepotent responses (inhibitory control [IC]) and to flexibly readapt (cognitive flexibility [CF]) steadily improving. Simultaneously, electrophysiological brain activity undergoes profound reconfiguration, which has been linked to individual variability in EC.…

Social understanding competence develops in sensitive and co-regulating caregiver interactions. Parental reflective functioning (PRF) and parenting stress can affect children's social understanding. This study investigated if children's social understanding was associated with PRF and parenting stress. Parents of 305 Italian children aged from 24…

This study examined children's emotion attributions and moral judgements to hypothetical procedural justice outcomes when the candidates were equal in merit but different in need. Children (7 to 11 years old, N = 88) were presented with four vignettes depicting resource-rich and resource-poor candidates losing educational materials and…

Motivation is a key factor for child development, but very few studies have examined child and family predictors of both child task and perceived motivation. Thus, the three aims of this 6-month longitudinal study in preschoolers with global developmental delays (GDD) were to explore: 1) differences between task and perceived motivation in…

Parental engagement in stimulating activities and support in both formal and informal learning environments are important for early childhood development. However, little is known about how parental mental health and beliefs about early childhood development shape such investments. We draw on a sample of young children and their primary caregiver…

Individual characteristics of neighborhood context, like concentrated socioeconomic disadvantage, are associated with children's cognitive development, including their academic skill development and executive functions. However, questions remain regarding how neighborhood structural, process, and physical features uniquely predict children's…

This study investigates the student- and school-level predictors of reading performance across five top-performing countries in the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) 2021. Utilising a multilevel analysis, the research examines the influence of cognitive development, socio-cultural contexts and educational environments on…