Research Findings: Self-regulation is an important determinant of children's developmental outcomes, but little research has explored its different facets simultaneously. This study aims to explore a sample of Chinese children's behavioral, cognitive and emotional self-regulation characteristics by examining their gender and age differences,…

Executive function skills constitute an important basis for learning and adaptation in early childhood. The executive function skills can easily improve in children who uses good practices in preschool. These skills are especially important because they help children overcome all complex tasks required to manage themselves. The aim of the present…

The present study aims to understand children's behavior within classroom settings in terms of conditioning theories. It was designed based on grounded theory. Data were collected through participant observation and 98 children whose ages varied between 6 and 10 years were observed. Data were inductively analyzed. Findings indicated that…

There is now wide consensus that the quality of family relationships is involved in the development of child executive functioning (EF), a set of cognitive skills that bear critical importance for social and academic adjustment at school. This body of research has, however, focused almost exclusively on dyadic parent-child interactions and failed…

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…

Humans possess a tendency to rapidly and consistently make character evaluations from mere facial appearance. Recent work shows that this tendency emerges surprisingly early: children as young as 3-years-old provide adult-like assessments of others on character attributes such as "nice," "strong," and "smart" based…

Children showing poor executive functioning may not fully benefit from learning experiences at home and school and may lag behind in literacy skills. This hypothesis was tested in a sample of 276 kindergarten children. Executive functions and literacy skills were tested at about 61?months and again a year later. In line with earlier studies,…

The current study examined the role of preschoolers' motivation, operationalized as persistence, in the formation of language and math skills at kindergarten. The participants were 263 children from diverse ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds. Demographic information, child persistence, and early cognitive-linguistic skills were assessed at…

The relations among various spatial and mathematics skills were assessed in a cross-sectional study of 854 children from kindergarten, third, and sixth grades (i.e., 5 to 13 years of age). Children completed a battery of spatial mathematics tests and their scores were submitted to exploratory factor analyses both within and across domains. In the…

To obtain reliable information, it is important to identify and effectively question knowledgeable informants. Two experiments examined how age and the ease of distinguishing between reliable and unreliable sources influence children's ability to effectively question those sources to solve problems. A sample of 3- to 5-year-olds was introduced to…

The goals of the Head Start Impact Study (HSIS) are to: (1) determine the impacts of Head Start on children's school readiness and parental practices that support children's development; and (2) to determine under what circumstances Head Start achieves its greatest impacts and for which children (US Department of Health and Human Services, 2010).…

Few studies have examined the influence of environmental factors on children's executive functioning (EF) performance. The present study examined the effects of a punitive vs. non-punitive school environment on West African children's EF skills. Tasks included a "cool" (relatively non-affective) and "hot" (relatively…

In this conceptual article, we integrate existing literature on early school transitions, ecological systems theory, and student-teacher relationships to propose a framework for investigating the transition to school for children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). A review of the literature suggests that the quality of early student-teacher…

Children who begin kindergarten with stronger skills learn faster than do those who enter with lower skills. Minority children tend to enter kindergarten already at a disadvantage, and the gap widens across time. However, little is known about cognitive development among American Indian young children. In this study, 110 American Indian infants…

Two experiments were conducted to compare the false belief understanding of children who have no siblings, but have classmates of different ages in kindergarten. In Experiment 1, 4- and 5-year-olds completed two unexpected location tasks. We found that 4-year-olds with classmates of different ages performed significantly better than those with…