Children's early math abilities have been claimed to depend differentially on various cognitive competencies (e.g., core number skills, working memory, and general math and reading abilities). Clarifying the relative importance of these different cognitive markers in predicting key early math skills would provide a conceptual framework for…

We investigated the contribution of morphological awareness to university students' reading comprehension ability. Although there is considerable evidence that morphological awareness contributes to children's reading ability, there is much less evidence concerning adults; the few studies of adults have not controlled other known predictors of…

Field independence describes the extent to which individuals are influenced by context when trying to identify embedded targets. It associates with cognitive functioning and is a predictor of academic achievement. However, little is known about the neural and cognitive underpinnings of field independence that lead to these associations. Here, we…

Purpose: This study aims to investigate the relationship between nonverbal cognitive functions and language processing of people with aphasia (PWA) by taking a data-driven approach, as well as multiple cognitive components and multilevel linguistic perspectives. It is hypothesized that language performance is differentially associated with…

When children are confronted with an emotional problem, affective flexibility mobilizes their cognitive and emotional resources to optimally address it. We investigated the contribution of executive functions to cognitive and affective flexibility in preschoolers. We assessed affective flexibility in 67 preschoolers (30 girls; M[subscript months]…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between executive functioning and word learning among preschoolers with and without developmental language disorder (DLD). Method: Forty-one preschool-age children with DLD were matched to typically developing children on age and sex. Participants were exposed to 10 novel…

Spatial ability, particularly the cognitive capacity for mental rotations, is a critical component of human cognition. Proficiency with mental rotation tasks is linked with educational performance in various Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines, and with more general tasks such as real world wayfinding. Spatial…

This study aimed to investigate the relationship between different components of active visuospatial working memory and math ability in young children. In a longitudinal study, we compared the contributions of active visual and spatial working memory (WM) tasks in early math performance at two times: the beginning of the first class of primary…

The present study examines both properties of the language and properties of the learner to better understand variability at the earliest stages of second language (L2) acquisition. We used event-related potentials, an oral production task, and a battery of individual differences measures to examine the processing of number and gender agreement in…

When we read narrative texts such as novels and newspaper articles, we segment information presented in such texts into discrete events, with distinct boundaries between those events. But do our eyes reflect this event structure while reading? This study examines whether eye movements during the reading of discourse reveal how readers respond…

Sentence repetition (SR) tasks have been shown to be excellent indicators of Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). However, there is still no consensus about which core ability they measure: language vs. Verbal Short-Term Memory (VSTM) and Verbal Working Memory (WM). Moreover, very few studies have investigated whether variables predicting SR…

The current study specified the extent to which hot and cool aspects of executive functioning predicted academic and social-emotional indicators of school readiness. It was unique in focusing on positive aspects of social-emotional readiness, rather than problem behaviors. One hundred four 3-5-year-old children completed tasks measuring executive…

We report two text change-detection studies in which we investigate the influence of reading perspective on text memory. In Experiment 1 participants read from the perspective of one of two characters in a series of short stories, and word changes were either semantically close or distant. Participants correctly reported more changes to…

Background: Word reading and linguistic comprehension skills are two crucial components in reading comprehension, according to the Simple View of Reading (SVR). Some researchers have posited that a third component should be involved in reading and understanding texts, namely executive function (EF) skills. Aim: This study was novel in two ways.…

Musical expertise and working memory (WM) have been isolated as being the most important predictors of phonetic aptitude -- meaning the ability to imitate unfamiliar speech material. Although the link between language functions and musical expertise has been subject to many investigations, specific languages and their individual link to musical…