The aim of this study was to investigate the interplay between test anxiety and working memory (WM) on mathematics performance in younger children. A sample of 624 grade 3 students completed a test battery consisting of a test anxiety scale, WM tasks and the Swedish national examination in mathematics for grade 3. The main effects of test anxiety…

In the present study, we explored how linguistic skills (phonological and semantic) influence the multiple components of school arithmetic (numeration, computation, and word problems) by analyzing them sequentially. We studied a sample of 262 schoolchildren, aged 8 to 11, nested in 27 classrooms, using the following measures: semantic skills,…

This article investigates verbal short-term memory (vSTM) and verbal working memory (vWM) abilities and their relation to lexical and syntactic abilities in monolingual (mono-) and bilingual (bi-) children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) and typical development (TD). The authors employed the following tasks: vSTM (non-word repetition…

In some models, intelligence has been described as a multidimensional construct comprising both analytical and creative abilities. In addition, intelligence is considered to be dynamic rather than static. A structural equation model was used to examine the predictive role of cognitive (visual short-term memory, verbal short-term memory, selective…

The article summarizes results from two experimental studies (N = 23, N = 21) investigating the extent to which working memory capacity (WMC) intervenes in "ab initio" language development under two pedagogical conditions [± grammar lesson + input-based practice + explicit feedback]. The linguistic target is the use of morphosyntax to…

Spatial memory research has attributed systematic bias in location estimates to a combination of a noisy memory trace with a prior structure that people impose on the space. Little is known about intraindividual stability and interindividual variation in these patterns of bias. In the current work, we align recent empirical and theoretical work on…

Executive function skills have a direct link to reading comprehension (Carretti, Borella, Cornoldi, & De Beni, 2009). Specifically, cognitive flexibility and working memory have been shown as a significant contributor to reading comprehension (Cain, Oakhill, & Bryant, 2004; Cartwright, 2002). Understanding the link between cognitive…

Although research suggests that certain cognitive functions predict the likelihood of intervention response for students who receive Tier 2 instruction through a response to intervention framework, researchers know less about cognitive predictors of response to Tier 3 instruction. This study measured 2nd and 3rd graders' performance on 7 cognitive…

Purpose: The present study examined whether engaging working memory in a secondary task benefits speech fluency. Effects of dual-task conditions on speech fluency, rate, and errors were examined with respect to predictions derived from three related theoretical accounts of disfluencies. Method: Nineteen adults who stutter and twenty adults who do…

Early calculation abilities in preschoolers are predictive of mathematics achievement in subsequent grades (e.g., Jordan et al. 2009). Two studies were conducted to evaluate concurrent and longitudinal predictors of early calculation skills. In the first study, 102 preschoolers (57.8% female; mean age?=?60.57?±?8.66 months) were given vocabulary,…

Purpose: Reading requires the ability to decode and comprehend. Impairments in working memory (WM) are often implicated in students who are poor decoders. It is unclear whether this is a domain-specific issue or a task-specific issue. Therefore, this study examined how auditory-verbal (AV) WM, visual-spatial (VS) WM, and cognitive load affected…

From a psycholinguistic perspective of view, there are many cognitive differences that matter to individuals' second-language acquisition (SLA). Although many computer-assisted tools have been developed to capture and narrow the differences among learners, the use of these strategies may be highly risky because changing the environments or the…

Purpose: Verbal working memory in children with cochlear implants and children with normal hearing was examined. Participants: Ninety-three fourth graders (47 with normal hearing, 46 with cochlear implants) participated, all of whom were in a longitudinal study and had working memory assessed 2 years earlier. Method: A dual-component model of…

Purpose: This longitudinal study examined differences in the development of working memory (WM) between children with specific language impairment (SLI) and typically developing (TD) children. Further, it explored to what extent language at ages 7-8 years could be predicted by measures of language and/or WM at ages 4-5 years. Method: Thirty…

Literacy levels in Africa are low, and school instruction outcomes are not promising. Africa also has a disproportionate number of unschooled children. Phonological awareness (PA), especially phoneme awareness, is critically associated with literacy, but there is little evidence about whether PA is gained through literacy, schooling, or both,…