We leveraged nationally representative data from the Panel study of Income Dynamics-Child Development Supplement (N = 3,562) and the Early Childhood Longitudinal study (N = 18,174), to chart the development of working memory, indexed via verbal forward and backward digit span task performance, from 3 to 19 years of age. Results revealed nonlinear…

The capacity of working memory is limited and undergoes important developmental changes during childhood. One proposed reason for the expansion of working memory capacity during childhood is the emergence and increased efficiency of active maintenance mechanisms, such as that of refreshing. Refreshing is a proposed mechanism to keep information…

Background: Developmental research provides considerable evidence of a strong relationship between verbal and visuospatial working memory (WM) and mathematics ability across age groups. However, little is known about how components of WM (i.e., short-term storage, processing speed, the central executive) might relate to mathematics sub-categories…

We investigated the effect of cognitive training of executive functions on children's cognitive outcomes. To address this issue, a systematic meta-analysis of published research articles on cognitive training interventions was performed considering children's age, training duration, -procedure, and -technology in moderator analyses. The results (N…

Executive functions (EFs) undergo dramatic changes during preschool years and show differential age-related effects. In view of this, the present study examines the developmental pathways of EF components among Hungarian preschoolers. The study sample consisted of 136 participants aged between 3 and 6 years old, who were assessed using the…

Cognitive control develops rapidly over the first decade of life, with one of the dominant changes being a transition from reliance on 'as-needed' control (reactive control) to a more planful, sustained form of control (proactive control). Although the emergence of proactive control is important for mature behavior, we know little about how this…

Selective attention is fundamental for learning across many situations, yet it exhibits protracted development, with young children often failing to filter out distractors. In this research, we examine links between selective attention and working memory (WM) capacity across development. One possibility is that WM is resource-limited, with…

Selective attention is fundamental for learning across many situations, yet it exhibits protracted development, with young children often failing to filter out distractors. In this research, we examine links between selective attention and working memory (WM) capacity across development. One possibility is that WM is resource-limited, with…

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…

Social working memory (WM) has distinct neural substrates from canonical cognitive WM (e.g., color). However, no study, to the best of our knowledge, has yet explored how social WM develops. The current study explored the development of social WM capacity and its relation to theory of mind (ToM). Experiment 1 had sixty-four 3- to 6-year-olds…

This longitudinal study examined developmental changes in conflict inhibition and error correction in three cohorts of children (5, 7, and 9 years of age). At each point of assessment, children completed three levels of Luria's tapping task (1980), which requires the inhibition of a dominant response and maintenance of task rules in working…

Proper segmentation of auditory streams is essential for understanding music. Many cues, including meter, melodic contour, and harmony, influence adults' perception of musical phrase boundaries. To date, no studies have examined young children's musical grouping in a production task. We used a musical self-pacing method to investigate (1) whether…

This study examined functional changes longitudinally over 2 years in neural correlates associated with working memory in youth with and without autism spectrum disorder, and the impact of increasing cognitive load. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging and a visuo-spatial 1-back task with four levels of difficulty. A total of 14 children…

The emergence of strategic verbal rehearsal at around 7 years of age is widely considered a major milestone in descriptions of the development of short-term memory across childhood. Likewise, rehearsal is believed by many to be a crucial factor in explaining why memory improves with age. This apparent qualitative shift in mnemonic processes has…

Pierce "et al." (2017) have proposed that variations in the timing, quality and quantity of language input during the earliest stages of development are related to variations in the development of phonological working memory and, in turn, to later language learning outcomes. To examine this hypothesis, three groups of children who are…