Executive control (EC) emerges in the first year of life, with the ability to inhibit prepotent responses (inhibitory control [IC]) and to flexibly readapt (cognitive flexibility [CF]) steadily improving. Simultaneously, electrophysiological brain activity undergoes profound reconfiguration, which has been linked to individual variability in EC.…

Musical training has long been viewed as a model for experience-dependent brain plasticity. Reports of musical training-induced brain plasticity are largely based on cross-sectional studies comparing musicians to non-musicians, which cannot address whether musical training itself is sufficient to induce these neurobiological changes or whether…

Despite the recognized importance of addressing belief bias in critical thinking, little is known about the neural activity underlying belief-bias reasoning and its connection to critical thinking. The study utilized event-related potentials (ERPs) to examine the neural responses during belief-bias reasoning and explored the extent to which these…

Abacus-based mental calculation (AMC) is a widely used educational tool for enhancing math learning, offering an accessible and cost-effective method for classroom implementation. Despite its universal appeal, the neurocognitive mechanisms that drive the efficacy of AMC training remain poorly understood. Notably, although abacus training relies…

The impact of bilingualism on the executive functioning constructs of inhibition, shifting, and updating remains unclear, with prior findings yielding inconsistent results. Several explanations for the lack of congruency have been suggested, including the dependence on observed variables, the impact of test modality on performance, and the need to…

The purpose of this quantitative, correlational-predictive study was to understand if and to what extent the demographic variables Age, Gender, and Years of Experience individually or combined predict Belief in Neurological Myths among higher education faculty in the United States. The approach utilized is grounded in the ongoing study of belief…

There is increasing evidence that the authoritarian parenting style has a negative effect on children's executive control, but little is known about the neurobiological mechanism behind this effect, especially the evidence of the resting-state EEG related to children's brain function. The current study explored the relations between authoritarian…

Understanding how pre-literate children's language abilities and neural function relate to future reading ability is important for identifying children who may be at-risk for reading problems. Pre-literate children are already proficient users of spoken language and their developing brain networks for language become highly overlapping with brain…

Purpose: It is often assumed that phonological awareness only reflects children's phonological skill. However, orthographic representations have been found to be automatically involved during phonological awareness tasks, which we refer to as automatic orthographic activation. Although previous longitudinal neural studies have addressed how…

Capturing developmental and learning-induced brain dynamics is extremely challenging as changes occur interactively across multiple levels and emerging functions. Different levels include the (social) environment, cognitive and behavioral levels, structural and functional brain changes, and genetics, while functions include domains such as math,…

This study aims to track college students' on-task rate during the teaching process and to analyze the influence of instructional strategies on on-task rate through the aspects of observable and internal engagement indicators. Thirty-six undergraduate students at a higher education institution in China participated in the study. Students'…

For more than a half-century, lists of words have served as the memoranda of choice in studies of human memory. To better understand why some words and lists are easier to recall than others, we estimated multivariate models of word and list recall. In each of the 23 sessions, subjects (N = 98) studied and recalled the same set of 576 words,…

Growth mindset, the belief that one's abilities can improve through cognitive effort, is an important psychological construct with broad implications for enabling children to reach their highest potential. However, surprisingly little is known about malleability of growth mindset in response to cognitive interventions in children and its…

The toddler and preschool years are a time of significant development in both expressive and receptive communication abilities. However, little is known about the neurobiological underpinnings of language development during this period, likely due to difficulties acquiring functional neuroimaging data. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS)…

We examined interactions between baseline hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) activity in relation to executive functions (EF) in a sample (n = 1,005) of children in low wealth, nonurban communities at age 48 months. Salivary cortisol and respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) represented baseline HPA…