Education and business leaders as well as the public at large have grown increasingly concerned about the achievement disparities that children from at-risk backgrounds manifest at a young age. Early childhood initiatives that take into account the entire preschool period of 0 to 5 years need a better understanding of the disparities which may be…

The limited number of organized sport and exercise programs available in urban areas in comparison with more affluent communities, as well as the limited resources, the low pay of service providers who offer the programs (especially in youth work), and the besieged mentality of many professionals require our attention and assistance. Our field…

The aim of this article is to provide an overview of research on expertise and training in complex domains. First, we present a summary of the origins of the research on expertise and the development of current theory in expert performance. Then we present a synopsis of the literature on expert performance in sport and perceptual-cognitive skills…

In this article, the author briefly traces the academic traditions that have formed the major body of student development literature, highlighting the evolution of separate rather than integrated constructs. She then summarizes Robert Kegan's conception of a metapsychology that integrates many of these separate lines of research. Next, she offers…

This chapter identifies four challenges to the study of the development of coping and regulation and outlines specific theoretical and empirical strategies for addressing them. The challenges are (1) to integrate work on coping and processes of emotion regulation, (2) to use the integration of research on neuro-biology and context to inform the…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of Jumpstart, a supplemental early literacy intervention, on preschool-age children from low-income backgrounds. Participants consisted of 74 low-income children from three preschools and child-care programs. Thirty-three children were randomly assigned by Jumpstart to the treatment group and 33…

Despite the fact that hemispheric asymmetry of attention has been widely studied, a clear picture of this complex phenomenon is still lacking. The aim of the present study was to provide an efficient and reliable measurement of potential hemispheric asymmetries of three attentional networks, i.e. alerting, orienting and executive attention.…

Thinking about other people's thoughts recruits a specific group of brain regions, including the temporo-parietal junctions (TPJ), precuneus (PC), and medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC). The same brain regions were recruited when children (N = 20, 5-11 years) and adults (N = 8) listened to descriptions of characters' mental states, compared to…

When providing effective reading and writing instruction, teachers need to provide explicit modeling. Modeling is particularly important when teaching students to use cognitive learning strategies. Examples of how teachers can provide specific, explicit, and flexible instructional modeling is presented in the context of two evidence-based…

Connectionist theories of language propose that written language deficits arise as a result of damage to semantic and phonological systems that also support spoken language production and comprehension, a view referred to as the "primary systems" hypothesis. The objective of the current study was to evaluate the primary systems account in a mixed…

Variability in strategy selection is an important characteristic of learning new skills such as mathematical skills. Strategies gradually come and go during this development. In 1996, Siegler described this phenomenon as ''overlapping waves.'' In the current microgenetic study, we attempted to model these overlapping waves statistically. In…

This study explored factors underlying preschoolers' ability to make future-oriented choices. In a delay-of-gratification choice task, quantity and visibility of the reward was systematically varied. Participants included 90 typically developing children aged 2-4 years. Children made more choices to delay gratification as the quantity of the…

When doing spring planting activities, what does a teacher do while waiting for the plants to grow? This waiting time is a golden opportunity to explore another side of gardening--the creatures that make it all possible. Insects are an integral part of everyday world, having existed for over 300 million years; they are the most common animal on…

Bodies are important element for self-recognition. In this respect, in adults it has been recently shown a self vs other advantage when small parts of the subjects' body are visible. This advantage is lost following a right brain lesion underlying a role of the right hemisphere in self body-parts processing. In order to investigate the bodily-self…

A role for the cerebellum in cognition has been proposed based on studies suggesting a profile of cognitive deficits due to cerebellar stroke. Such studies are limited in the determination of the detailed organisation of cerebellar subregions that are critical for different aspects of cognition. In this study we examined the correlation between…