This study aimed to understand how mindfulness meditation affects young people by examining its impact on self-regulation, happiness, emotional awareness, and school performance among two groups of school children. A 10-week mindfulness program was conducted by a meditation expert for 552 children aged 4-8 (Group 1) and 287 children aged 9-11…

Research Findings: The amount of time and type of program that children experience in early childhood settings may be associated with children's kindergarten-entry skills, or kindergarten readiness. Taking a person-centered perspective, in the present study, we examined the extent to which reliable and unique profiles of early childhood…

In present study, the school, social and activities competencies of neurotypical siblings of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD-NTDsibs) were examined. A total of 146 children, including 66 ASD-NTDsibs and 80 children both themselves and their siblings are neurotypical (NTC-NTDsibs), participated in the study, which was designed in the…

School recess is a daily opportunity for school-age students to be physically active. However, in some territories teachers often use recess for other purposes (e.g., children's poor classroom behavior might be punished with reduced time for recess). This study aimed to examine the impact of such practices on children's physical activity (PA) and…

This study examined early development of cool and hot self-regulation and how they were related to Chinese preschoolers' early achievement. A total of 951 children (448 girls) aged three to five in Hong Kong participated in this study. Children's self-regulation was assessed with a battery of five tasks tapping either cool or hot self-regulation;…

There is growing interest among educational researchers in using heart rate variability (HRV) as an index of children's capacity to regulate their physiological arousal. Links between HRV and young children's self-regulation have, however, been inconsistent, and there is limited research on children's HRV in learning-related contexts. HRV was…

Externalizing behavior and low academic performance present key developmental challenges for school-age children, with the potential for these domains to predict each other over time, leading to worsened outcomes. Yet, previous studies have yielded inconsistent conclusions about the directional pathways between externalizing behaviors and academic…

This paper assesses the reliability and validity of the teacher-completed Pupil Behaviour Questionnaire (PBQ), by comparing it to the already extensively validated teacher-completed Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). Participants included 2074 primary school children participating in a universal school-based trial and 41 vulnerable…

Understanding executive functions (EFs) development is of high value to global developmental science. Recent calls for a more inclusive and equitable developmental science argue that tasks and questionnaires that are developed using only a subset of the population are not likely to be appropriate for EFs measurement in global contexts unless…

The current study evaluated bidirectional associations between mother and father positive parenting and child effortful control. Data were drawn from 220 families when children were 3, 4, 5, and 6 years old. Parenting and effortful control were assessed when the child was 3, 4, and 5 years old. These variables were used to statistically predict…

The present study considered the ways in which interactional quality in the classroom and teacher--child relationships independently and synergistically shaped the early academic, social-behavioral, and executive function outcomes of 1,498 preschoolers from low-income families from a large, culturally, and linguistically diverse county. The…

Relationships between sluggish cognitive tempo (SCT) and age and IQ were investigated in children with autism and/or ADHD covering broader age and IQ ranges than in previous studies. Mothers rated 1436 children with autism and 1,056 with ADHD (2-17 years, IQs 9-149) on Pediatric Behavior Scale SCT items. Increasing age correlated with SCT in the…

Since the Coleman Report's release in 1966, education policymakers have grappled with the fact that, on average, African American children's academic and behavioral outcomes are depressed relative to those of white children (Coleman et al. 1966). Because African American children disproportionately come from low-income families, it is generally…

In the cognitive, computational, neuropsychological, and educational literatures, it is established that children approach text in unique ways, and that even adult readers can differ in the strategies they bring to reading. In the developmental event-related potential (ERP) literature, however, children with differing degrees of reading ability…

In recent years, the construct of character has received substantial attention among developmental scientists, but no consensus exists about the content and structure of character, especially among children and early adolescents. In a study of positive development among racially diverse Cub Scouts in the greater Philadelphia area, we assessed the…