Teachers and allied professionals change the brains of students with their instruction and interventions. Since their efforts lead to physiological changes through the brain's natural propensity for plasticity, it is perplexing that very few educators know about the brain, or how their actions influence brain development in the children they…

Inhibitory control (IC) emerges in infancy, continues to develop throughout childhood and is linked to later life outcomes such as school achievement, prosocial behavior, and psychopathology. Little, however, is known about the neural processes underpinning IC, especially in 2-year-olds. In this study, we examine functional connectivity (FC) in…

Spanking remains common around the world, despite evidence linking corporal punishment to detrimental child outcomes. This study tested whether children (M[subscript age] = 11.60) who were spanked (N = 40) exhibited altered neural function in response to stimuli that suggest the presence of an environmental threat compared to children who were not…

Throughout childhood and adolescence, humans experience marked changes in cortical structure and cognitive ability. Cortical thickness and surface area, in particular, have been associated with cognitive ability. Here we ask the question: What are the time-related associations between cognitive changes and cortical structure maturation.…

Executive function (EF) skills are a set of attention-regulation skills involved in intentional, goal-directed behavior that include (but are not limited to) the cool EF skills of working memory, cognitive flexibility, and inhibitory control, and also the hot EF skill of intentional reevaluation. These skills are inevitably expressed in goal- and…

The early prediction of math difficulties (MD) is important as it facilitates timely support. MD are multifaceted, and several factors are involved in their manifestation. This makes the accurate early prediction of MD particularly challenging. In the present study, we aim to predict MD in Grade 6 with kindergarten-age (age 6) measures by applying…

Older interlocutors are more likely than younger ones to make pragmatic inferences, that is, inferences that go beyond the linguistically encoded meaning of a sentence. Here we ask whether pragmatic development is associated with increased activity in brain structures associated with inference-making or in those associated with Theory of Mind. We…

Sensorimotor integration is an unconscious process of the brain incorporating multiple senses and movement. This review aimed to synthesize the literature on the role of visual-motor integration in language learning, whether spoken or signed, for deaf and hard of hearing (D/HH) children. Nineteen peer-reviewed studies published between 1980 and…

Spatial memory, the aspect of memory involving encoding and retrieval of information regarding one's environment and spatial orientation, is a complex biological function incorporating multiple neuronal networks. Hippocampus-dependent spatial memory is not innate and emerges during development in both humans and rodents. In children,…

Early caregiving experiences play a central role in shaping emotional development, stress physiology, and refinement of limbic circuitry. Converging evidence across species delineates a sensitive period of heightened neuroplasticity when frontoamygdala circuitry is especially amenable to caregiver inputs early in life. During this period, parental…

Mother and child wellbeing are intimately connected during pregnancy and the first 12 months of the infant's life. The fetus and child directly experience the mother's life and are shaped by it. A mother's environmental experiences, physical health, and psychological distress affect her interactions with her infant, which in turn have…

Interdisciplinary efforts to foster the development and education of children living in poverty require a comprehensive concept of multiple dimensions, within a systemic approach involving ecological and transactional perspectives. Constructing a common interdisciplinary language dealing with child development in ecological terms is a necessary…

How does the brain's response to speech change over the first months of life? Although behavioral findings indicate that neonates' listening biases are sharpened over the first months of life, with a species-specific preference for speech emerging by 3 months, the neural substrates underlying this developmental change are unknown. We…

Episodic memory shows striking improvement during early childhood. However, neural contributions to these behavioral changes are not well understood. This study examined associations between episodic memory and volume of subregions (head, body, and tail) of the hippocampus--a structure known to support episodic memory in school-aged children and…

This fMRI study investigated neural responses while making appraisals of self and other, across the social and academic domains, in children and adolescents with and without autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Compared to neurotypical youth, those with ASD exhibited hypoactivation of ventromedial prefrontal cortex during self-appraisals. Responses in…