The present study examines the link between children's number of older siblings and their cognitive development, as measured by executive function (EFs) skills and verbal skills (VIQ) in a sample of 1,302 4-year-old children (54% boys) living in rural Pakistan. Specifically, we investigate whether the links between the number of older siblings and…

This study explores patterns of development in cognitive, as well as social and emotional skills for children in the first year of school in Russia. The data analyzed are drawn from the International Performance Indicators in Primary Schools project. This is a large-scale assessment project involving 2741 children from two Russian regions. A…

Few studies have investigated how preschool and primary school interact to influence children's cognitive development. The present investigation explores German children's numeracy skills between age 3 (1st year of preschool) and age 7 (1st year of primary school). We first identified the influence of preschool experience on development while…

This paper explores the importance of the home and school environments in explaining the gender gap in disruptive behavior. We document large differences in the gender gap across key features of the home environment--boys do especially poorly in broken families. In contrast, we find little impact of the early school environment on non-cognitive…

This study examined the degree to which dimensions of parenting predicted early academic outcomes in a sample of 111 low-income African American children. Three aspects of parenting were assessed when the children were 36 months old: language stimulation, math-related stimulation, and maternal sensitivity. Academic outcomes were assessed at 54…

Recently researchers have begun to explore the extent to which children's cognitive development is influenced by experiences in the family environment. Assessing mother-child dyads exposed to intimate partner violence (IPV), a population at risk for emotional and neurocognitive problems, we examined relationships between maternal emotional…

Previously we found in preschool that child-directed pretend play in small playing groups importantly improves cognitive competence in mixed-age environment and that the effect is based on close coupling between affective and cognitive domain. To foster affective and cognitive intertwining, it is reasonable to select the most favored pretend plays…

Residential crowding in both U.S. and U.K. samples of 36-month-old children is related concurrently to the Bracken scale, a standard index of early cognitive development skills including letter and color identification, shape recognition, and elementary numeric comprehension. In the U.S. sample, these effects also replicate prospectively.…

Using data from the first 2 phases of the NICHD Study of Early Child Care, the authors examine the links between maternal employment in the first 12 months of life and cognitive, social, and emotional outcomes for children at age 3, at age 4.5, and in first grade. Drawing on theory and prior research from developmental psychology as well as…

Maternal education is a strong correlate of children's language, cognitive, and academic development. In most prior research, mothers' education has been treated as a fixed characteristic, yet many mothers, particularly economically and educationally disadvantaged mothers, attend school after the birth of their children. In the present study, we…

Head Start is a federally funded preschool program for poor children designed to help close the gap between those children and their more advantaged peers before they begin public schooling. Given that Head Start appears to have positive long-run impacts on its recipients, a natural and important next question to ask is: What are the channels…

This study examines the relationships among third and fourth grade teacher practices in cognitive development: understanding, application, synthesis, and judgment; emotional/social development; their students' self-reported opportunities for emotional/social development; and academic self-concept. In addition, this study investigates the…

Using data from the 1996 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79) merged mother-child sample, we investigate the impact of two family events, parental divorce and the birth of a sibling, on the cognitive stimulation and emotional support provided to children in the home. We use fixed-effect regression techniques to control for unmeasured…

This study is concerned with experiences of ethnic identity amongst a group of three-year-old and four-year-old children, four-fifths of whom are of Pakistani heritage and the remainder of white indigenous heritage. Focused on a nursery school in the United Kingdom, the study explores the relationship between the individual and the social and…

Differences in racial socialization practices and their effects were examined in a sample of 241 African American 1st graders (average age 6.59 years) living in an urban area. Child outcomes included cognitive development, receptive language skills, and child problem behavior. The cultural environment of the home was associated with higher…