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 sought to elucidate the contributions of inferior executive function and social competence to the development of internalizing and externalizing problems in primary school. Children (N = 1,115), on average 5.36 years old in first grade, were followed across primary school with measures of multi-method and multi-informant. Results of…

For many years, researchers studied executive functions (EFs) in the laboratory with a focus on understanding an individual child's development and brain processes in a controlled environment. Building on this foundational research, there is a growing interest in EFs in the context of a child's dynamic, social world, and the contextual and…

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…

Studies have demonstrated significant associations between executive function (EF) and reading ability. Many of these studies have evaluated this association through composite EF skills. In this study, we evaluated the indirect effects of working memory (WM) and cognitive flexibility (CF) in the relation between kindergarten socioeconomic status…

Performance-based tools to assess school readiness domains such as Approaches to Learning are lacking in Low and Middle-Income Countries such as Kenya. This study aims to develop the Kenyan version of the FOCUS app (Finding Out Children's Unique Strengths), a game-like computer tablet assessment of two Approaches to Learning domains: mastery…

Executive functions (EF) are domain-general cognitive skills that predict foundational academic skills such as literacy and numeracy. However, less is known about the relation between EFs and science achievement. The nature of this relation might be explained by the theory of mutualism, which states that development is the result of complex and…

We explored whether and how cognitive measures of executive function (EF) can be used to help classify academic performance in Kindergarten and first grade using nonparametric cluster analysis. We found that EF measures were useful in classifying low-reading performance in both grades, but mathematics performance could be grouped into low,…

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…

Make-believe play has been theorized to promote self-regulation skills and other positive child outcomes. In this study, we examine the make-believe play approach featured in the "Tools of the Mind" (Tools) early childhood curriculum, which identifies students' self-regulation cultivation among its core programmatic aims. Using data from…

Although we know that children who are more frequently absent from school do less well academically, we know little about whether absences matter for other domains of development and whether the timing of their absences matter. In order to address these gaps in knowledge, we examined the experiences of 1,131 kindergartners (64% Hispanic, 7% Black,…

Whether a child is ready for school is of interest for different parties involved. With a person-centred approach, the present study examined 123 kindergarteners (59 girls, 64 boys) regarding their early executive functions and social skills profiles. Children were 6-7 years of age at the first measurement point (M = 6; 6, SD = 4.22, range = 5;…

We investigated the role of linguistic and cognitive processes in reading precocity from kindergarten to grade 2. A sample of 33 precocious readers was identified that did not differ on age, gender, and parental education to a control group of 259 typical readers. The effects of verbal ability were also controlled. All children were administered a…

Reading fluency undoubtedly underlies reading competence; yet, the role of executive functions (EFs) is less well understood. Here, we investigated the relation between children's reading fluency and EF. Children's (n = 82) reading and language performance was determined by standardized assessments and EF by parental questionnaire. Results…

One hundred sixty-five Hong Kong Chinese children were administered measures of early mathematics, visual-spatial skills, and executive functioning (working memory, inhibition, shifting, updating) once in kindergarten (mean age = 62.80 months, SD = 3.74) and again in first grade (mean age = 77.25 months, SD = 4.60). In kindergarten, visual-spatial…