Schooling may shape children's abilities to control their attention, but it is unclear if this impact extends from control over visual objects to encompass multisensory objects, which are more typical of everyday environments. We compared children across three primary school grades (Swiss first, third, and fifth grades) on their performance on a…

Recent efforts have focused on screening methods to identify children at risk for dyslexia as early as preschool/kindergarten. Unfortunately, while low sensitivity leads to under-identification of at-risk children, low "specificity" can lead to over-identification, resulting in inaccurate allocation of limited educational resources. The…

Mastering single-digit arithmetic during school years is commonly thought to depend upon an increasing reliance on verbally memorized facts. An alternative model, however, posits that fluency in single-digit arithmetic might also be achieved via the increasing use of efficient calculation procedures. To test between these hypotheses, we used a…

Working memory, executive functions, and cognitive processes associated with specific academic areas, are empirically identified as being the core underlying cognitive deficits in students with specific learning disabilities. Using Hebb's theory of neuroplasticity and the principle of automaticity as theoretical bases, this experimental study…

In an attempt to devise a methodology for characterizing children's intuitive theories of drug action, 217 children in Grades 1 to 6 were interviewed about how two substances, alcohol and cocaine, cause behavioral changes in their users. Measures tapped both structure (Piagetian complexity of causal reasoning, coherence, and construction of a…