Purpose: The aims of this study were to examine phonological short-term memory in children born preterm (PT) and to explore relations between this neuropsychological process and later language skills. Method: Children born PT (n = 74) and full term (FT; n = 60) participated in a nonword repetition (NWR) task at 36 months old. Standardized measures…

This longitudinal study examines the relative importance of counting ability, additive reasoning, and working memory in children's mathematical achievement (calculation and story problem solving). In Hong Kong, 115 Chinese children aged 6 years old participated in 2 waves of assessments (T1 = first grade and T2 = second grade). Multiple regression…

Prosodic awareness (the rhythmic patterning of speech) accounts for unique variance in reading development. However, studies have thus far focused on early readers and utilised literacy measures which fail to distinguish between monosyllabic and multisyllabic words. The current study investigated the factors that are specifically associated with…

Background: Children with specific language impairment (SLI) often experience word-learning difficulties, which are suggested to originate in the early stage of word learning: fast mapping. Some previous research indicates significantly poorer fast mapping capabilities in children with SLI compared with typically developing (TD) counterparts, with…

There is growing evidence supporting the importance of executive functions, and specifically working memory updating (WMU), for children's academic achievement. This study aimed to assess the specific contribution of updating to the prediction of academic performance. Two updating tasks, which included different updating components, were…

Deficit in working memory is common among young children across multiple abilities. Teachers have pointed to poor memory as one contributing factor to inattentiveness and short attention spans as well as some behavioural problems among students. This study aimed to explore the relationship among working memory, externalizing and internalizing…

More research is needed that investigates how positive psychology-associated traits are predicted by neurocognitive processes. Correspondingly, the purpose of this study was to ascertain how, and to what extent, four traits, namely, grit, optimism, positive affect, and life satisfaction were predicted by the executive functioning (EF) dimensions…

Background: Evidence exists that there are two main underlying cognitive factors in mathematical difficulties: working memory and number sense. It is suggested that real math difficulties appear when both working memory and number sense are weak, here referred to as the double deficit (DD) hypothesis. Aims: The aim of this study was to test the DD…

Purpose: This study explored whether measures of working memory ability contribute to the wide variation in 2-year-olds' expressive vocabulary skills. Method: Seventy-nine children (aged 24-30 months) were assessed by using standardized tests of vocabulary and visual cognition, a processing speed measure, and behavioral measures of verbal working…

Problem solving has been a core theme in education for several decades. Educators and policy makers agree on the importance of the role of problem solving skills for school and real life success. A primary purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of cognitive abilities on mathematical problem solving performance of elementary…

This study examined the Chinese written composition development of elementary-grade students in relation to the simple view of writing. Measures of nonverbal reasoning ability, component skills of transcription (stroke sequence knowledge, word spelling, and handwriting fluency), oral language (definitional skill, oral narrative skills, and…

This study examined associations between broad cognitive abilities (Fluid Reasoning [Gf], Short-Term Working Memory [Gwm], Long-Term Storage and Retrieval [Glr], Processing Speed [Gs], Comprehension-Knowledge [Gc], Visual Processing [Gv], and Auditory Processing [Ga]) and reading achievement (Basic Reading Skills, Reading Rate, Reading Fluency,…

Test anxiety and its correlates were examined with college students with and without specific reading disability (RD; n = 50 in each group). Results indicated that college students with RD reported higher test anxiety than did those without RD, and the magnitude of these differences was in the medium range on two test anxiety scales. Relative to…

The same working memory and reading and writing achievement phenotypes (behavioral markers of genetic variants) validated in prior research with younger children and older adults in a multi-generational family genetics study of dyslexia were used to study 81 adolescent and young adults (ages 16 to 25) from that study. Dyslexia is impaired word…

The purpose of this study was to identify cognitive and linguistic predictors of word problems with versus without irrelevant information. The sample was 701 2nd-grade students who received no specialized intervention on word problems. In the fall, they were assessed on initial arithmetic and word-problem skill as well as language ability, working…