A good deal of research purports that bilingualism has a positive effect on some aspects of cognitive functioning. However, this effect is not consistent, and little research examines trajectories of cognitive skill development in bilingual children. Moreover, it remains unclear whether different types of bilingualism impact how cognitive…

A growing body of research has found a relationship between parenting and the development of executive function in young children; however, fewer studies have examined how parenting is related specifically to the development of working memory. Using data from the Family Life Project, this study examined whether attention was a pathway through…

There is strong evidence that self-regulatory processes are linked to early academic skills, both concurrently and longitudinally. The majority of extant longitudinal studies, however, have been conducted using autoregressive techniques that may not accurately model change across time. The purpose of this study was to examine the unique…

Bilingualism is a typical linguistic experience, yet relatively little is known about its impact on children's cognitive and brain development. Theories of bilingualism suggest that early dual-language acquisition can improve children's cognitive abilities, specifically those relying on frontal lobe functioning. While behavioral findings present…

Early selective attention skills are a crucial building block for cognitive development, as attention orienting serves as a primary means by which infants interact with and learn from the environment. Although several studies have examined infants' attention orienting using the spatial cueing task, relatively few studies have examined…

This longitudinal study examined the hypothesis that two different types of joint-attention skills were related to verbal and nonverbal IQ measures through middle childhood. Subjects were infants born preterm and tested at 13 months and at 8 years. Findings provide support for the hypothesis that the initiation of joint attention makes a unique…

The four purposes of this study were (1) to test the long-range effects of classification training (CT) on disadvantaged black children, (2) to evaluate the effects of reintroducing CT to those previously trained, (3) to compare CT at two age periods (5 and 6 years old), and (4) to compare CT with attention training (AT). Of the 69 children used…