Poverty, neglect, or family stress can make it especially difficult for young children to develop the self-discipline and habits of mind they will need to succeed in the classroom and beyond. Armed with research and a commitment to the whole child, Washington state has transformed the way its agencies work together and in partnership with…

In the United States, approximately 7% to 10% of children are raised in bilingual households. Despite inherent advantages to bilingualism, some bilingual children experience a significant lag in academic success relative to other groups. Bridging the fields of cognitive psychology and education, this volume presents research-based knowledge on…

The impulse to investigate the natural world is deeply rooted in our earliest childhood experiences. This notion has long guided researchers to uncover the cognitive mechanisms underlying the development of scientific reasoning in children. Until recently, however, research in cognitive development and education followed largely independent…

Genetics contributes importantly to learning abilities and disabilities--not just to reading, the target of most genetic research, but also to mathematics and other academic areas as well. One of the most important recent findings from quantitative genetic research such as twin studies is that the same set of genes is largely responsible for…

Tool use is central to interdisciplinary debates about the evolution and distinctiveness of human intelligence, yet little is actually known about how human conceptions of artifacts develop. Results across these two studies show that even 2-year-olds approach artifacts in ways distinct from captive tool-using monkeys. Contrary to adult intuition,…

A fundamental question in developmental science is how brains with and without language compute numbers. Measuring young children's verbal reactions in France (Paris) and in England (Oxford), here we show that, although there is a general arithmetic ability for small numbers that is shared by monkeys and preverbal infants, the development of such…

Background: Deficits in autism have been characterised as a bias towards local over global processing. This paper examines whether there is a deficit in gestalt grouping in autism. Method: Twenty-five low-functioning children with autism and 25 controls who were matched for chronological age and verbal mental age took part in the study. Results:…

Recent studies have reported that preverbal infants are able to discriminate between numerosities of sets presented within a particular modality. There is still debate, however, over whether they are able to perform intermodal numerosity matching, i.e. to relate numerosities of sets presented with different sensory modalities. The present study…

Two studies explored children's understanding of how the presence of conflicting mental states in a single mind can lead people to act so as to subvert their own desires. Study 1 analyzed explanations by children (4-7 years) and adults of behaviors arising from this sort of "Ulysses conflict" and compared them with their understanding of…

"Educating the Human Brain" is the product of a quarter century of research. This book provides an empirical account of the early development of attention and self regulation in infants and young children. It examines the brain areas involved in regulatory networks, their connectivity, and how their development is influenced by genes and…