Considerable research has documented the impact of teacher perceptions on students' academic-related outcomes (e.g., classroom performance). This body of literature clearly shows that teacher perceptions (resulting from direct interactions with students) can have both positive and negative effects with respect to student behaviors and experiences…

Children start preschool with large individual differences in their early numerical abilities. Little is known about the importance of heterogeneous patterns that exist within these individual differences. A person-centered analytic approach might be helpful to unravel these patterns and the cognitive and environmental factors that are associated…

A significant number of studies have examined the cognitive components of basic academic skills, which has led to major changes in both teaching and early identification assessment practices. However, the majority of previous research has focused solely on reading. This study examines the cognitive components of academic writing skills across…

Children experience good and bad days in their performance. Although this phenomenon is well-known to teachers, parents, and students it has not been investigated empirically. We examined whether children's working memory performance varies systematically from day to day and to which extent fluctuations at faster timescales (i.e., occasions,…

In this study the authors investigated whether children demonstrated the "underconfidence-with-practice" (UWP) effect. This effect is a highly robust metacognitive illusion in which adults become underconfident in their memory performance when asked to predict their memory for the same items across multiple study-test trials. One…

The authors examined an activity-based listening strategy with first- and third-grade children in mixed-grade dyads. On the basis of theories of cognitive development and previous research, the authors predicted the following: (a) children in an activity-based strategy would recall more story events compared with those in a repetition strategy and…

The authors investigated the performance on simple multiplication and division problems of 8-year-old children longitudinally to determine the developmental trajectories of both operations. Twice a year, during 2 consecutive school years, children performed a multiplication and division verification task and a number-matching task. All effects…

The contribution of the three core components of working memory (WM) to the development of mathematical skills in young children is poorly understood. The relation between specific WM components and Numerical Operations, which emphasize computation and fact retrieval, and Mathematical Reasoning, which emphasizes verbal problem solving abilities in…

The time-based resource-sharing model (P. Barrouillet, S. Bernardin, & V. Camos, 2004) assumes that during complex working memory span tasks, attention is frequently and surreptitiously switched from processing to reactivate decaying memory traces before their complete loss. Three experiments involving children from 5 to 14 years of age…

The influence of cognitive growth in working memory (WM) on mathematical problem solution accuracy was examined in elementary school children (N = 353) at risk and not at risk for serious math problem solving difficulties. A battery of tests was administered that assessed problem solving, achievement, and cognitive processing (WM, inhibition,…