This study explored how caregiver-reported executive functioning domains, assessed by the BRIEF2 at baseline, predicted behavioral challenges reported by caregivers using the CBCL six months later. The sample included 94 youth with Down syndrome, aged 6 to 18 years. Results of hierarchical regression analyses revealed that, after controlling for…

The close relationship between working memory and maths problem solving is generally accepted, but the specifics of how working memory and its subcomponents contribute to maths problem solving remain poorly understood. Tests of working memory, maths problem problem solving, calculation, and intelligence were administered to 246 university…

Background: Perceptual and speech production abilities of children with cochlear implants (CIs) are usually tested by word and sentence repetition or naming tests. However, these tests are quite far apart from daily life linguistic contexts. Aim: Here, we describe a way of investigating the link between language comprehension and anticipatory…

The attentional boost effect refers to the observation that when simultaneously performing a scene memory task and a target detection task, participants better remember scenes that appear at the same time as the detection target than scenes that coincide with distractors. The attentional boost effect is thought to result from a transient increase…

Previous studies on value-driven attentional capture (VDAC) have demonstrated that the uncertainty of reward value modulates attentional allocation via associative learning. However, it is unclear whether such attentional exploration is executed based on the amount of potential reward information available for refining value prediction or the…

The benefits of incorporating process information in a large-scale assessment with the complex micro-level evidence from the examinees (i.e., process log data) are well documented in the research across large-scale assessments and learning analytics. This study introduces a deep-learning-based approach to predictive modeling of the examinee's…

Although the link between developmental dyslexia and visual-spatial deficit has been recurrently highlighted, the relationship between visual-spatial abilities and reading performance is still a controversial issue, considering the orthographic variability of the language being learned. This study aimed to examine whether visuo-spatial abilities…

Background: The study aimed to explore to what extent variables associated with lexical and sublexical spelling processes predicted single word spelling ability and whether patterns of lexical and sublexical processes were different across ages. Methods: Beginning (mean age 7 years, N=144) and advanced (mean age 9 years, N=114) English-speaking…

Presentation of two kinds of materials in working memory (visual and acoustic), with the requirement to attend to one or both modalities, poses an interesting case for working memory development because competing predictions can be formulated. In two experiments, we assessed such predictions with children 7-13 years old and adults. With…

Attentional control of referential information is an important contributor to the structure of discourse. We investigated how attention and memory interplay during visually situated sentence production. We manipulated speakers' attention to the agent or the patient of a described event by means of a referential or a dot visual cue. We also…

Stimuli co-occurring with targets in a detection task are better remembered than stimuli co-occurring with distractors--the attentional boost effect (ABE). The ABE is of interest because it is an exception to the usual finding that divided attention during encoding impairs memory. The effect has been demonstrated in tests of item memory but it is…

Perceiving not just values, but relations between values, is critical to human cognition. We tested the predictions of a proposed mechanism for processing categorical spatial relations between two objects--the "shift account" of relation processing--which states that relations such as "above" or "below" are extracted…

Do words cue children's visual attention, and if so, what are the relevant mechanisms? Across four experiments, 3-year-old children (N = 163) were tested in visual search tasks in which targets were cued with only a visual preview versus a visual preview and a spoken name. The experiments were designed to determine whether labels facilitated…

This study examined the relation of 3-year core information-processing abilities to lexical growth and development. The core abilities covered four domains--memory, representational competence (cross-modal transfer), processing speed, and attention. Lexical proficiency was assessed at 3 and 13 years with the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT)…

Sentence imitation effectively discriminates between adults with and without specific language impairment (SLI). Little is known, however, about the factors that result in performance differences. This study evaluated the effects of working memory, processing speed, and argument status on sentence imitation. Working memory was measured by both a…