Childhood adversity takes a toll on lifelong health. However, investigations of unpredictability as a form of adversity are lacking. Environmental unpredictability across multiple developmental periods and ecological levels was examined using a multiethnic, longitudinal birth cohort (1998-2000) oversampled for unmarried parents. Data were from the…

This study examined repeating and growing pattern knowledge and their associations with procedural and conceptual arithmetic knowledge in a sample of U.S. children (N = 185; M[subscript age] = 79.5 months; 55% female; 88% White) and adults (N = 93; M[subscript age] = 19.5 years; 62% female; 66% White) from 2019 to 2020. Three key findings emerged:…

Parenting and children's temperament are important influences on language development. However, temperament may reflect prior parenting, and parenting effects may reflect genes common to parents and children. In 561 U.S. adoptees (57% male) and their birth and rearing parents (70% and 92% White, 13% and 4% African American, and 7% and 2% Latinx,…

Preschool teachers' perceptions about relationships with students (teacher-child relationships [TCRs]) predict children's subsequent social competence (SC) and academic progress. Why this is so remains unclear. Do TCRs shape children's development, or do child attributes influence both TCRs and subsequent development? Relations between TCRs and…

Maintaining learning engagement throughout adolescence is critical for long-term academic success. This research sought to understand the role of metacognition and motivation in predicting adolescents' engagement in math learning over time. In two longitudinal studies with 2,325 and 207 adolescents (ages 11-15), metacognitive skills, interest, and…

This study explored the hypothesis that preschoolers' deductive reasoning would be improved by encouraging use of divergent thinking (DT). Children of 4-5 years of age (n = 120) were randomly given DT or neutral control exercises before deductive reasoning problems. To allow a stronger test of the hypothesis, half of the children receiving the DT…

Although research has established that school adjustment is associated with marijuana use (MU) in adolescence, few studies have tested these associations bidirectionally. Using random intercepts cross-lagged panel modeling, this study examined reciprocal associations between MU and school adjustment across 8th to 10th grade, including the…

This study examined differential and mediating relations between hot and cool self-regulation (M[subscript age] = 48.2 months; N = 1,155, 48% girls), first-grade (M[subscript age] = 77.5 months) maladjustment (externalizing [EXT] and internalizing [INT] behavior), and first- and second-grade (M[subscript age] = 89.5 months) academic competence…

Notwithstanding its well-established role on high-demanding spatial navigation tasks during adulthood, the effect of field dependence-independence during the acquisition of spatial navigation skills is almost unknown. This study assessed for the first time the effect of field dependence-independence on topographical learning (TL) across the life…

Critical consciousness, the process by which individuals come to understand, analyze, and take action against systems of oppression, is associated with several positive youth outcomes. However, little research has considered how the core components of critical consciousness (critical reflection, political agency, critical action) are associated…

Socioeconomic status (SES) and bilingualism have been shown to influence executive functioning during early childhood. Less is known, however, about how the two factors interact within an individual. By analyzing a nationally representative sample of approximately 18,200 children who were tracked from ages 5 to 7 across four waves, both higher SES…

This research investigated the relation between racial categorization and implicit racial bias in majority and minority children. Chinese and Indian 3- to 7-year-olds from Singapore (N = 158) categorized Chinese and Indian faces by race and had their implicit and explicit racial biases measured. Majority Chinese children, but not minority Indian…

We examined the cross-lagged relations between reading and spelling in five alphabetic orthographies varying in consistency (English, French, Dutch, German, and Greek). Nine hundred and forty-one children were followed from Grade 1 to Grade 2 and were tested on word and pseudoword reading fluency and on spelling to dictation. Results indicated…

We examined the bidirectional relations between home literacy environment, reading interest, and children's emergent literacy and reading skills in a sample of 172 English-speaking Canadian children (M[subscript age] = 75.87 months) followed from Grade 1 to Grade 3. Results of cross-lagged analysis revealed that the reading comprehension…

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…