Identifying and understanding the predictors of preliteracy skills can set the stage for success in a child's academic career. Recent literature has implicated social-emotional competence as a potential component in helping children learn preliteracy skills. To further understand the role of social-emotional competence in preliteracy, the…

We used data from a large, longitudinal study of children in the community, the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, to examine how well earlier measures of delay capacity, inhibitory control, planning, and attention predicted symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) assessed in third grade. Children with…

Background: Earlier studies of young people with Down's syndrome have investigated a relatively limited range of variables which may influence their academic attainment. The relative strength of such influences and how they may vary during the school career, has also been under-researched. Aims: The aim of the paper is to identify the contemporary…

Few studies have specifically investigated the cognitive correlates of employment for persons with mental retardation. To evaluate the relationship of cognitive and adaptive functioning to work status, 56 competitively employed and 55 unemployed individuals with mental retardation underwent a comprehensive neuropsychological and adaptive…

Individual looks at television vary enormously in length, and this has previously indicated differences in ongoing cognitive processes. Furthermore, the relative frequency of looks of different lengths may indicate styles of attention to television. This article compares visual attention of 152 subjects across a variety of genres and examines…

Proactive interference (PI) may influence the predictive utility of working memory span tasks. Participants in one experiment (N=70) completed Ravens Advanced Progressive Matrices (RAPM) and multiple versions of operation span and probed recall, modified for the type of memoranda (digits or words). Changing memoranda within- or across-trials…

This report summarizes the research results and provides a reference. The basic question addressed was, "Is performance on multi-component tasks predicted by performance on the individual components performed separately?" In the first series of experiments, a dual task involving memory and verbal processing components to predict a…

This study investigated whether specific behaviors observed in 30 month-old low-birthweight children are predictive of diagnosis of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and school difficulties at age 8. Videotapes of 571 participants were coded using the Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder Observational Rating Scale (ADHD-ORS).…

Negative emotionality and poor attention may combine or interact as risk factors in development. Negative emotionality is considered a challenge for self-regulation, whereas good attention is a potential means of self-regulation. In the current study, composites of 1- and 2-year maternal ratings of negative emotionality and global ratings of…