The development of executive function (EF) has been linked to various life outcomes, motivating intense research on the topic. While much of this research has focused on more thoroughly understanding age-related changes of the underlying neurocognitive mechanisms involved, recent theoretical and empirical works have stressed how the immediate…

Differences in socioeconomic status (SES) correlate both with differences in cognitive development and in brain structure. Associations between SES and brain measures such as cortical surface area and cortical thickness mediate differences in cognitive skills such as executive function and language. However, causal accounts that link SES, brain,…

Parental sensitivity and nurturance are important mechanisms for establishing biological, emotional, and social functioning in childhood. Sensitive, nurturing care is most critical during the first three years of life, when attachment relationships form and parental care shapes foundational neural and physiological systems, with lifelong…

As a contribution to the discussion on the assessment of informal inferential reasoning (IIR) and the transition from this to formal inferential reasoning (FIR), we present a review of research on how these two types of inferential reasoning have been conceptualized and assessed. Based on our review, we discuss the need to redefine the conceptions…

Emotional awareness is the ability to conceptualize and describe one's own emotions and those of others. Over thirty years ago, a cognitive-developmental theory of emotional awareness patterned after Piaget's theory of cognitive development was created as well as a performance measure of this ability called the Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale…

The population of multiracial youth in the United States is expected to grow in the coming decades (exceeding 11% by 2060). In this article, we aim to convince child development researchers who do not usually examine race and ethnicity in their work to consider multiracial youth. We describe ways in which youth from more than one racial background…

Symbolic play is a powerful vehicle for supporting emotional development and communication. It embraces all developmental capacities. This article describes how symbols are formed and how emotional themes are symbolized whereby children reveal their understanding of the world, their feelings and relationships, and how they see themselves in the…

The expert performance approach, initially proposed by Ericsson and Smith (1991), is reviewed as a systematic framework for the study of "expert" learning. The need to develop representative tasks to capture learning is discussed, as is the need to employ process-tracing measures during acquisition to examine what actually changes during…

Conoley, Powers, and Gutkin (2020) called for an increased emphasis on models of psychological service delivery that are primarily indirect, adult-focused, and geared toward systems-level change in the schools. They asserted that research in school psychology should not focus on the problems of individual children and youth but address the…

Constant development of information and digital technologies changes the learning process and the specifics of social relations between the student and the teacher. The use of new means of communication makes an important contribution to the development of skills in using technology, intensive self-study and social interaction. A new generation of…

In this review, we attempt to integrate two crucial aspects of numerical development: learning the magnitudes of individual numbers and learning arithmetic. Numerical magnitude development involves gaining increasingly precise knowledge of increasing ranges and types of numbers: from non-symbolic to small symbolic numbers, from smaller to larger…

This integrative text spotlights what educators need to know about children's cognitive development across grade levels (PreK-12) and content areas. The book provides a concise introduction to developmental neuroscience and theories of learning. Chapters on general cognitive abilities probe such crucial questions as what children are capable of…

Developmental cognitive neuroscience studies tend to show that the prefrontal brain regions (known to be involved in inhibitory control) are activated during the generation of creative ideas. In the present article, we discuss how a dual-process model of creativity--much like the ones proposed to account for decision making and reasoning--could…

The meaning, mechanism, and function of imitation in early infancy have been actively discussed since Meltzoff and Moore's (1977) report of facial and manual imitation by human neonates. Oostenbroek et al. (2016) claim to challenge the existence of early imitation and to counter all interpretations so far offered. Such claims, if true, would have…

Currently (and historically) there exists a significant gender gap within the STEM fields in our schools, tertiary institutions, and workforce. The disproportion of gender representation in the workforce filters down to the classroom level, where teachers see a lack of confidence and engagement in their female students resulting in poor results or…