Academic achievement is an important factor strongly related to positive educational experiences that facilitate subsequent learning. Therefore, identifying students who need support at an early stage and promptly providing appropriate intervention play a crucial role in preventing learning deficits. This study examined the longitudinal change in…

The metarepresentational aspect of early pretend play (make-believe activities where children create or participate in creating a new situation different from a real one) has been theoretically debated. In the present longitudinal study of N = 83 children, we tested for predictive relations of shared attention at 12-18 months, implicit false…

Based on control-value theory (CVT), we examined longitudinal relations between students' control and value appraisals, three activity-related achievement emotions (enjoyment, anger, and boredom), and math achievement (N = 1,716 fifth and seventh grade students). We assessed appraisals and emotions with self-report measures of perceived competence…

Research on what neural mechanisms facilitate word reading development in non-alphabetic scripts is relatively rare. The present study was among the first to adopt a multivariate pattern classification analysis to decode electroencephalographic signals recorded for primary school children (N = 236) while performing a Chinese character decision…

Phonological awareness has been found to be strongly related to spelling. Findings on the relations between rapid-naming and spelling are less consistent and have been suggested to be shared with speed of processing. This study set out to examine these relations in spelling and reading of Hebrew. Children attending the regular educational system…

There is limited research examining stability and change in attachment security in middle childhood. The current study addresses this gap using data from a 3-year longitudinal study. Specifically, we examined stability and change in secure base script knowledge during middle childhood using a sample of 157 children (Wave 1 mean age [M[subscript…

This study assessed the extent to which executive functions (EF), according to their factor structure in 5-year-olds (N = 244), influenced early quantity-number competencies, arithmetic fluency, and mathematics school achievement throughout first and second grades. A confirmatory factor analysis resulted in updating as a first, and inhibition and…

Purpose: This study explored associations between working memory and language in children aged 2-4 years. Method: Seventy-seven children aged 24-30 months were assessed on tests measuring language, visual cognition, verbal working memory (VWM), phonological short-term memory (PSTM), and processing speed. A standardized test of receptive and…

Relations between children's (n = 213) mother-reported effortful control components (attention focusing, attention shifting, inhibitory control at 42 months; activational control at 72 months) and mother-reported shyness trajectories across 42, 54, 72, and 84 months of age were examined. In growth models, shyness decreased. Inhibitory control and…

Both autism spectrum (ASD) and anxiety disorders are associated with atypical neural and attentional responses to emotional faces, differing in affective face processing from typically developing peers. Within a longitudinal study of children with ASD (23 male, 3 female), we hypothesized that early ERPs to emotional faces would predict concurrent…

Sparse research suggests that children's social information processing has links not just with aggressive behavior but also with children's prosocial behavior (e.g., Nelson & Crick, 1999). However, the past work that has been done has not been longitudinal, so the direction of links between social information processing and prosocial…

This 4-year study examined longitudinal interplays between adolescents' and mothers' self-reported empathic concern (EC) and perspective taking (PT). We investigated (a) whether adolescents' EC predicted rank-order change in their PT over time, or vice versa; (b) whether mothers' empathy predicted relative increases in adolescents' empathy; (c)…

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) can be identified in the preschool years, but little is known about the correlates of ADHD symptoms in preschool children. Research to date suggests that factors such as temperament, personality, and neuropsychological functioning may be important in understanding the development of early ADHD…

Attention is construed as multicomponential, but the roles of its distinct subfunctions in shaping the broader developing cognitive landscape are poorly understood. The current study assessed 3- to 6-year-olds (N = 83) to: (a) trace developmental trajectories of attentional processes and their structure in early childhood and (b) measure the…

Social support is a multidimensional construct that consists of the type of support, the direction of support, the sources or targets of support, and whether support is actual or potential. We used latent class analysis to uncover network types based on these dimensions and to examine the association between network types and well-being among…