When young children evaluate their confidence, their monitoring is often overoptimistic, that is, inaccurate. The present study investigated a potential underlying mechanism for kindergarteners' and second graders' overconfidence within a paired associates learning paradigm. We implemented a pre-monitoring phase motivating children to…

The objective for beginning writers is to learn how to generate alphabet-letters which are recognisable and easy to read. This study investigated the accuracy of Year 1 and 2 children's alphabet-letter-writing by evaluating their alphabet and orthographic knowledge, following evidence which identifies these skills as important for correctly…

Background: Phonological processing skills have been found to contribute to spelling development across different orthographies; however, less is known about the role of orthographic knowledge. This longitudinal study explores the contribution of phonological and orthographic knowledge to spelling development in a semi-transparent orthography…

Purpose: Children make spelling errors despite classroom instruction on phoneme-grapheme connections and spelling rules. We examined whether additional practice helps to decrease the number of spelling errors for a morphological spelling rule. We distinguished explicit practice in applying a spelling rule from implicit exposure to correct word…

Morphological knowledge is known to be positively associated with reading ability. However, whether morphological knowledge affects children's learning of new orthographic representations is less clear. Purpose: This study aimed to investigate morphological effects on orthographic learning in English, and whether this effect, if any, is different…

Schooling may shape children's abilities to control their attention, but it is unclear if this impact extends from control over visual objects to encompass multisensory objects, which are more typical of everyday environments. We compared children across three primary school grades (Swiss first, third, and fifth grades) on their performance on a…

Morpheme-based literacy training programs are widely used in German primary schools. This study investigated whether (1) morphological training is effective early in development (Grade 2) and (2) literacy gains can be attributed to advanced morphological processing. Fifty-two German-speaking second-graders participated in an eight-week…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of a morphological awareness intervention on the spelling and writing of second-grade (n = 16) and third-grade (n = 10) students at risk for learning disabilities. The intervention was provided for 25 min per session 4 to 5 times per week for 5 weeks. Students were randomly assigned to the…

Purpose: Children's ability to adjust one's language according to discourse context is important for success in academic settings. This study examined whether second graders vary in linguistic and discourse features depending on discourse contexts, that is, when describing pictures in contextualized (describing the picture to an examiner while…

Purpose: Children's ability to adjust one's language according to discourse context is important for success in academic settings. This study examined whether second graders vary in linguistic and discourse features depending on discourse contexts, that is, when describing pictures in contextualized (describing the picture to an examiner while…

Previous research findings indicate that young children from East Asia outperform their counterparts from Europe and North America on executive function (EF) tasks. However, very few cross-national studies have focused on EF development during middle childhood. The current study assessed the EF performance of 170 children in grades 2 and 4 from…

Executive function (EF) contributes significantly to reading comprehension across the lifespan. Emerging research indicates domain-specific assessments of EF are better suited for assessment and intervention in academic contexts. For example, "graphophonological-semantic cognitive flexibility" (GSF), the ability to flexibly switch…

The morphological structure of the word has a central function in the organization of the mental lexicon and word recognition. Polymorphemic words in Arabic are composed of two non-concatenated morphemes: root and word-pattern. This study is the first to address the issue of nominal-pattern priming among young developing Arabic speakers. I…

The present study aimed at developing young children's knowledge of the structure and function of orthographic components of Chinese characters and words. Grade 2, eight-year-old Chinese children (N = 541) were taught a twelve-week training programme in two quasi experimental conditions: analytic and synthetic approach (ASA), and integrated…

Purpose: This study examines the effect of age and task complexity on the macrostructure of story production in preschool- and school-age Kuwaiti Arabic--speaking children. It also compares the children's production of core and complementary macrostructure story elements. Method: A descriptive, cross-sectional research design was used to explore…