Background: In the digital age, fostering young children's computational thinking (CT) and executive functions (EFs) through programming has emerged as a significant research issue. While unplugged programming activities are commonly adopted in preschools, robot programming activities have recently gained attention for the potential to enhance…

Debugging is an intellectually rich and a challenging process when learning a programming language. This process is important for increasing the quality of the program and making it functional. Debugging, by its nature, is thought to be a practice with a state of focus and concentration. This study explored whether the debugging performance could…

Tangible programming tools (TPTs) are promising teaching aids in programming courses due to their interactivity and ability to enhance early childhood students' computational thinking, spatial reasoning, and executive function skills. However, it remains unclear whether TPTs support these skills simultaneously. This study examines the impact of…

We explored the potential of a robotics application in education as a measurement tool of child executive functioning skills. Sixty-five kindergarteners received assignments to go through a maze with a programmable robot, the Bee-Bot. Via observation we quantified how they solved these tasks. Their performance was successfully aggregated into a…

The current quantitative study, a naturalistic field experiment, was conducted in a public primary school in Soweto, Johannesburg, with the objective to examine how children's achievement on four assessments at the beginning of Grade R, namely their numeracy, their mathematics-specific vocabulary, their executive functions, and their logical…

Research has yet to reach a definitive consensus on whether or how bilingualism confers benefits on Executive Function (EF): numerous studies show an EF advantage for bilinguals over monolinguals, while others indicate no significant differences. These inconsistencies demonstrate that the mechanisms behind a potential bilingualism-to-EF…

This study investigated the relations between television exposure during the preschool years and the development of executive function (EF). Data were gathered from 107 parents of preschoolers who provided information on children's television viewing, background television exposure, exposure to specific televised content, and the age at which…

This study described the relations among the amount of child-directed versus adult-directed television exposure at ages 1 and 4 with cognitive outcomes at age 4. Sixty parents completed 24-hour television diaries when their children were 1 and 4 years of age. At age 4, their children also completed a series of cognitive measures and parents…