There is a debate about the ability to improve cognitive abilities such as fluid intelligence through training on tasks of working memory capacity. The question addressed in the research presented here is who benefits the most from training: people with low cognitive ability or people with high cognitive ability? Subjects with high and low working…

This article presents a meta-analytic review of the relation between executive function and reading comprehension. Results (N = 6,673) supported a moderate positive association between executive function and reading comprehension (r = 0.36). Moderator analyses suggested that correlations between executive function and reading comprehension did not…

Responding to a robust body of literature suggesting that children's early educational experiences are critical, policymakers have implemented and expanded the provision of full-day kindergarten (FDK) in recent decades. Most studies have focused on the effectiveness of FDK on child academic assessments or test scores, but none have examined FDK…

Individuals with greater cognitive abilities generally show reduced rates of mind-wandering when completing relatively demanding tasks (Randall, Oswald, & Beier, 2014). However, it is yet unclear whether elevated rates of mind-wandering among low-ability individuals are manifestations of deliberate, intentional episodes of mind-wandering…

The study of executive function (EF) has become increasingly popular in multiple areas of research. A wealth of evidence has supported the value of EF in shaping notable outcomes across typical and atypical development; however, little evidence has supported the cognitive contributors to early EF development. The current study used data from a…

This study investigated the processes reflected in the widely observed N400 and P600 event-related potential (ERP) effects and tested the hypothesis that the N400 and P600 effects are functionally linked in a tradeoff relationship, constrained in part by individual differences in cognitive ability. Sixty participants read sentences, and ERP…

One of the recommended approaches in instructional design methods is to optimize the value of working memory capacity and avoid cognitive overload. Educational neuroscience offers novel processes and methodologies to analyze cognitive load based on physiological measures. Observing psychophysiological changes when they occur in response to the…

Although memory retrieval often enhances subsequent memory, Peterson and Mulligan (2013) reported conditions under which retrieval produces poorer subsequent recall--the negative testing effect. The item-specific--relational account proposes that the effect occurs when retrieval disrupts interitem organizational processing relative to the restudy…

Two main mechanisms, articulatory rehearsal and attentional refreshing, are argued to be involved in the maintenance of verbal information in working memory (WM). Whereas converging research has suggested that rehearsal promotes the phonological representations of memoranda in working memory, little is known about the representations that…

Working memory (WM) has long been associated with deficiencies in reading. Approximately 35% of students in the United States who receive special education services do so under the category of specific learning disability (SLD). The study's theoretical underpinning was Baddeley's model of WM; previous research revealed a significant literature gap…

Previous research has shown that there is a time cost (i.e., a resumption lag) associated with resuming a task following an interruption and that the longer the duration of the interruption, the greater the time cost (i.e., resumption lag increases as interruption duration increases). The memory-for-goals model (Altmann & Trafton, 2002)…

Bilinguals often outperform monolinguals on executive function tasks, including tasks that tap cognitive flexibility, conflict monitoring, and task-switching abilities. Some have suggested that bilinguals also have greater working memory capacity than comparable monolinguals, but evidence for this suggestion is mixed. We therefore conducted a…

It is unknown whether children with conduct problems (CP) and poor reading (PR) skills exhibit more profound executive function impairments than children with CP only and whether such impairments are explained by coexisting PR. Executive functions were compared in four groups of 7- to 8-year-old children: 26 CP only, 35 PR only, 27 CP-PR, and 31…

We investigated processes underlying performance decrements of highly test-anxious persons. Three experiments contrasted conditions that differed in the degree of activation of concepts related to failure. Participants memorized a list of words either containing words related to failure or containing no words related to failure in Experiment 1. In…

We examined children's sleep at age 9 as a predictor of developmental trajectories of cognitive performance from ages 9 to 11 years. The effects of sleep on cognition are not uniform and thus we tested race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status (SES), and sex as moderators of these associations. At the first assessment, 282 children aged 9.44 years (52%…