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…

Although growing up in stressful conditions can undermine mental abilities, people in harsh environments may develop intact, or even "enhanced," social and cognitive abilities for solving problems in high-adversity contexts (i.e. 'hidden talents'). We examine whether childhood and current exposure to violence are associated with memory…

The emerging field of robotics education (RE) is a new and rapidly growing subject area worldwide. It may provide a playful and novel learning environment for children to engage with all aspects of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning. The purpose of this research is to examine how robotics learning activities may…

Education leaders need valid metrics to predict students' long-term success. We use a unique data set with cognitive skills, self-regulation, behavior, course performance, and test scores for eighth-grade students from a Northeast school district. We link these data to students' high school outcomes, college enrollment, persistence, and on-time…

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…

Cognitive abilities are essential to children's overall growth; thus, the implementation of early and effective training interventions is a major challenge for developmental psychologists and teachers. This study explores whether an intervention simultaneously operating on fluid reasoning (FR), visuospatial, narrative, and motor abilities could…

Despite receiving scant attention, the evolution of categorization in early childhood is of central importance, not only in clarifying the child's understanding of the world but in terms of refining cognitive organization and augmenting the development of semantic memory. In this review, we outline how categorization develops and is made manifest…

Although there is a rich literature on children's strategies for remembering, little attention has been paid to characterizing developmental change within individual children and to examining mediators that may bring about such change. To address these issues, we assess children's memory skills over time while simultaneously examining…

Understanding gender differences in human cognitive development may contribute to understanding the gender differences in outcomes in cognitive ageing. However, evaluation of this topic has been hindered by a lack of representative, longitudinal data from different aged cohorts measured on the same cognitive tests. Gender differences in cognitive…

The field of cognitive training (CT) has been researched for over a century. However, there is still a debate regarding its ability to produce cognitive improvement, especially in working memory (WM) indices. This meta-analysis examined whether there is an advantage in training gains by comparing the results of two specific WM training approaches,…

Executive functions (EF) are domain-general cognitive skills that predict foundational academic skills such as literacy and numeracy. However, less is known about the relation between EFs and science achievement. The nature of this relation might be explained by the theory of mutualism, which states that development is the result of complex and…

Categories are fundamental to everyday life and the ability to learn new categories is relevant across the lifespan. Categories are ubiquitous across modalities, supporting complex processes such as object recognition and speech perception. Prior work has proposed that different categories may engage learning systems with unique developmental…

In this study (n = 1000, M[subscript age at K1entry] = 53.4 months, SD = 3.4; 53% females), we investigated the contributions of the family socioeconomic status (SES; maternal education and an income-related measure) and number and age of siblings to the development of children's math, reading, and working memory (WM) updating skills over the…

(1) Background: An abacus is an instrument used to perform different arithmetic operations. The objective was to analyze the benefits of mathematical calculations made with an abacus to improve the concentration, attention, memory, perceptive attitudes, and creativity cognitive abilities of primary school students. (2) Methods: A total of 65…

Working memory (WM) is a significant predictor of academic performance. Emerging empirical evidence has shown that WM can be improved via computerized cognitive training (CCT). Though studies have shown that CCT can improve WM in typical and atypical populations, little is known regarding the efficacy of implementing CCT within a school setting.…