Working memory is an often studied and important psychological construct. The growth of working memory capacity (WMC) in childhood is described as linear. Average adult WMC is estimated as either four or five "chunks." Using latent curve models of data from a measure of digit span backward that was administered longitudinally to a large…

Young children have informal knowledge of fractions before learning about fraction symbols in school. In the current study, we followed 103 children in the Mid-Atlantic United States from the fall to the spring of first grade to characterize the development of individual differences in early informal fraction knowledge, as well as its relation to…

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…

False memories are well established episodic memory phenomena. Recent research in young adults has shown that semantically related associates can be falsely remembered as studied items in working memory (WM) tasks for lists of only a few items when a short 4-second interval was given between study and test. The present study reported two…

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…

Recently, there has been increasing evidence showing that males estimate whole numbers more accurately than females on the number line. However, relatively little is known about what factors contribute to this gender gap. The current study explored potential mediators of the gender difference in number line estimation, including spatial skills and…

There is increasing evidence for an association between both serial order short-term memory (STM) and the long-term learning (LTL) of serial order information and reading abilities. In this developmental study, we examined the hypothesis that STM for serial order supports online grapheme-to-phoneme conversion processes during the initial stages of…

Guided by evolutionary-developmental models, this study tested the hypothesis that children's exposure to parental relationship instability, defined by initiation and dissolution of caregiver intimate relationships, has both costs in cognitive impairments and benefits in enhanced learning skills. Participants included 243 mothers and their…

The present study examined longitudinal associations between preschoolers' executive function (EF) and adult educational attainment, impulse control, and general health directly and through its cascading effects on childhood and adolescent EF using a large, national, and prospective longitudinal sample of participants. Data were drawn from the…

Growth in working memory capacity, the number of items kept active in mind, is thought to be an important aspect of childhood cognitive development. Here, we focused on participants' awareness of the contents of their working memory, or "meta-working memory," which seems important because people can put cognitive abilities to best use…

Elementary school students often lack a conceptual understanding of linear measurement, which is revealed by their poor performance when the object to be measured is not aligned with the start of the ruler. Instead of correctly counting the units that correspond to the object (e.g., inches or centimeters), children often use 1 of 2 incorrect…

Children with higher levels of executive function (EF) skills consistently demonstrate higher levels of academic achievement. Despite the consistency of these associations, fundamental questions remain about whether efforts to improve an individual child's EF skills result in corresponding improvements in his or her academic performance. In the…

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…

The transition to elementary school is accompanied by increasing demands for children to regulate their attention and behavior within the classroom setting. Executive control (EC) may be critical for meeting these demands; however, few studies have rigorously examined the association between EC and observed classroom behavior. This study examined…

Children practice their spatial skills when playing with spatial toys, such as construction materials, board games, and puzzles. Sex and SES differences are observed in the engagement in such spatial play activities at home, which relate to individual differences in spatial performance. The current study investigated the effects of explicitly…