This study examines associations between enrollment in high-quality PreK and growth in children's (N = 422; M[subscript age] = 5.63 years; 47% female; 15% Asian, 19% Black, 30% White, 31% Hispanic; 5% other or mixed race) academic, executive functioning, and social-emotional skills across kindergarten (2017-2018) and first grade (2018-2019).…

This study evaluated the appropriateness of scoring the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function--Preschool (BRIEF-P) using age-equivalent scores generated from multiple measures of cognition and language among school-age children with Down syndrome (DS). Subscale T scores for 95 children with DS were contrasted using standard scoring on…

By using a three-time longitudinal design, the present study focuses on three components of executive function (EF), respectively, to examine whether the relation between EF and receptive vocabulary was reciprocal and whether the direction of the above relation would differ by EF components and child gender. A total of 320 Chinese preschool…

Executive functions are a set of cognitive skills and processes used when directing behaviour towards the attainment of a certain goal. A large literature has documented positive associations between executive functions and a variety of desirable outcomes throughout life, including academic achievement. However, training executive functions…

Research Findings: Prior research has demonstrated the importance of young children's executive functioning (EF) skills for their success in schooling and beyond. However, the field lacks an understanding of how children's EF skills manifest in context. In the present study, we relate children's classroom off-task behavior to their EF skills.…

Pre-kindergarten (Pre-K) programs typically improve early academic skills, but those gains too often disappear after children transition to elementary school. At least three hypotheses explain this "fade-out" of Pre-K effects: Pre-K does not focus on the "trifecta skills" that uniquely support subsequent learning and…

The current study provides new evidence on the sustained benefits of preschool attendance on a broader range of skills--both academic and executive functioning (EF)--than many prior studies have examined. Using propensity score methods, we predicted children's (N = 920, M age at 1st = 6.5 years) literacy, language, math, and EF skills in…

Classroom-level quality measures are widely used in early education settings but may mask important variation in learning experiences across children in the same classroom. This study investigates this possibility using detailed data from an observational measure of individual children's learning experiences--Individualizing Student Instruction…

Executive function (EF), a set of neurocognitive processes, is central to students' emotional and behavioral well-being. Despite students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) being at risk for negative long-term outcomes, there is a paucity of EF research with students at risk for EBD in early elementary school, an important…

The simple view of reading proposes that the development of reading comprehension in early elementary school is best predicted by children's fluent decoding and oral language skills. Recent studies challenge this view and suggest that executive functions should also be included in this theoretical model; however, the empirical evidence is not…

We examined the extent to which the timing of inferential questioning influenced kindergartners' inferencing performance in a non-reading context, while also taking into account individual differences in language comprehension and executive function. Students completed the eight-week Early Language Comprehension Individualized Instruction (ELCII)…

Peer isolation poses risks to children's social-emotional and academic development, contributing to internalizing and externalizing problems and school adjustment difficulties. To deepen scholarly understandings of peer isolation in early classroom settings, the current study examined the co-occurrence of child characteristics associated with…

The early elementary years are foundational for future academic achievement, and, as the number of Latino students in U.S. schools continues to rise, more attention has been given to the academic performance of these young learners. Yet little is known about the cognitive skills, such as executive function (EF), that may underlie Latinos' academic…

We examined the extent to which the timing of inferential questioning influenced kindergartners' inferencing performance in a non-reading context, while also taking into account individual differences in language comprehension and executive function. Students completed the eight-week Early Language Comprehension Individualized Instruction (ELCII)…

We investigated whether the cool and hot executive functions (EFs) exhibited by kindergarteners could predict their academic achievement in the middle grades of elementary school. The study assessed the cool and hot EF of 48 Japanese kindergartners (M = 78.12 months) and then measured these same children's academic achievement in language and…