There has been much recent interest in letter position coding in adults, but little is known about the development of this process in children learning to read. Here, the letter position coding abilities of 127 children in Grades 2, 3, and 4 (aged 7-10 years) were examined by comparing their performance in reading aloud "migratable" words (e.g.,…

We studied risky choices in preschoolers, elementary schoolers, and adults using an information board paradigm crossing two options with two cues that differ in their probability of making valid predictions (p = 0.50 vs. p = 0.83). We also varied the presence of normatively irrelevant information. Choice patterns indicate that preschoolers were…

Fractions pose significant challenges for many children, but for some children those challenges persist into high school. Here we administered a fractions magnitude comparison test to 122 children, from Grades 4 to 8, to test whether their knowledge of fractions typically learned early in the sequence of formal math instruction (e.g., fractions…

In this study, the development of comprehension of essential and nonessential aspects of counting is examined in children ranging from 5 to 8 years of age. Essential aspects, such as logical rules, and nonessential aspects, including conventional rules, were studied. To address this, we created a computer program in which children watched counting…

We investigated whether young English-French biliterate children can distinguish between English and French orthographic patterns. Children in French immersion programs were asked to play a dictionary game when they were in Grade 2 and again when they were in Grade 3. They were shown pseudowords that contained either an English spelling pattern or…

Western adults associate small numbers with left space and large numbers with right space. Where does this pervasive spatial-numerical association come from? In this study, we first recorded directional counting preferences in adults with different reading experiences (left to right, right to left, mixed, and illiterate) and observed a clear…

The aim of the study was to undertake a behavioral investigation of the development of automatic orthographic processing during reading acquisition in French. Following Castles and colleagues' 2007 study ("Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 97," 165-182) and their lexical tuning hypothesis framework, substituted-letter and…

Reciprocal relations between emerging morphological processes and reading skills were examined in a longitudinal study tracking children from Grade 1 through Grade 3. The aim was to examine predictive relationships between productive morphological processing involving composing and decomposing of inflections and derivations, reading ability for…

Both exploration and explicit instruction are thought to benefit learning in many ways, but much less is known about how the two can be combined. We tested the hypothesis that engaging in exploratory activities prior to receiving explicit instruction better prepares children to learn from the instruction. Children (159 second- to fourth-grade…

Several studies on free recall suggest that processes responsible for recall are analogous to processes responsible for rehearsal. In children, the relationship between cumulative rehearsal and recall performance has been proven to be critical; however, the locus of the effect of rehearsal is not yet fully understood. To unfold the mechanisms that…

The current study used latent profile analysis (LPA) to examine anger control in 257 second-grade children (approximately 8 years of age). Anger was induced through losing a game and prize to a confederate who cheated. Three components of anger control were assessed: self-report of awareness of anger, observed intensity of angry facial…

The development of two-digit number processing in children, and in particular the influence of place-value understanding, has recently received increasing research interest. However, place-value influences leading to decomposed processing have not yet been investigated for multi-digit numbers beyond the two-digit number range in children.…

We tested children in Grades 1 to 5, as well as college students, on a number line estimation task and examined latencies and errors to explore the cognitive processes involved in estimation. The developmental trends in estimation were more consistent with the hypothesized shift from logarithmic to linear representation than with an account based…

This longitudinal study examined how language ability relates to mathematical development in a linguistically and ethnically diverse sample of children from 6 to 9 years of age. Study participants were 75 native English speakers and 92 language minority learners followed from first to fourth grades. Autoregression in a structural equation modeling…

The lexical decision task is probably the most common laboratory visual word identification task together with the naming task. In the usual setup, participants need to press the "yes" button when the stimulus is a word and the "no" button when the stimulus is not a word. A number of studies have employed this task with developing readers;…