Methods to handle ordered-categorical indicators in latent variable interactions have been developed, yet they have not been widely applied. This article compares the performance of two popular latent variable interaction modeling approaches in handling ordered-categorical indicators: unconstrained product indicator (UPI) and latent moderated…

Participants were administered multiple measures of phonological awareness, oral language, and rapid automatized naming at the beginning of kindergarten and multiple measures of word reading at the end of second grade. A structural equation model was fit to the data and latent scores were used to identify children with a deficit in phonological…

Kindergarten teacher turnover is an important topic in education, especially in East Asia. Two approaches, the disease model and positive psychology perspective, are integrated to investigate kindergarten teachers' turnover intention, and the "happy/productive teacher" hypothesis that happy teachers have lower turnover intention is…

The role of working memory (WM) in language acquisition has been widely reported in the developmental literature, but few studies have explored the role of sentence recall in the way WM and related linguistic abilities evolve. This study seeks to explore the organization and development of the memory architecture underlying language using a…

The simple view of reading describes reading comprehension as the product of decoding and listening comprehension and the relative contribution of each to reading comprehension across development. We present a cross-sectional analysis of first, second, and third graders (N = 123-125 in each grade) to assess the adequacy of the basic model.…

Language comprehension is crucial to reading. However, theoretical models and recent research raise questions about what constitutes this multifaceted domain. We present two related studies examining the dimensionality of language comprehension and relations to reading comprehension in the upper elementary grades. Studies 1 (Grade 6; N = 148) and…

In the present study, we examined the influence of kindergarten component skills on writing outcomes, both concurrently and longitudinally to first grade. Using data from 265 students, we investigated a model of writing development including attention regulation along with students' reading, spelling, handwriting fluency, and oral language…

This study tested a hypothesized model examining reading proficiency across first grade. It addressed how alphabetics at the beginning of the year were mediated by applied and automated skills at the middle of the year to explain actualized reading at the end of the year. The alphabetic skills of 102 first graders were measured in October and the…

This study determined the working memory (WM) components (executive, phonological short-term memory [STM], and visual-spatial sketchpad) that best predicted mathematical word problem-solving accuracy in elementary schoolchildren (N = 392). The battery of tests administered to assess mediators between WM and problem-solving included measures of…

This study examined the dynamic relationships among the components of the Simple View of Reading (SVR) in a transparent orthography (Finnish) and the predictive value of cognitive skills (phonological awareness, letter knowledge, rapid naming, and vocabulary) on the SVR components. Altogether, 1,815 Finnish children were followed from kindergarten…

In this study, the role of teacher-student relationships and students' social and emotional skills as potential predictors of students' emotional and behavioural difficulties was investigated by tapping into 962 primary school students' perceptions via questionnaires. While significant correlations were found linking teachers' interpersonal…