Educational research suggests that lower-income children exhibit poor general executive functioning relative to their higher-income peers. Meanwhile, sports psychology research suggests that an acute bout of aerobic exercise improves executive functioning in children. Yet, it has never been determined if such exercise (1) specifically improves the…

The development of children's cognitive and social skills is a topic of considerable importance and interest in education and educational psychology. The current study examines whether emotion knowledge and self-regulation predict cognitive competence, social competence, and classroom behavior problems among a sample of 74 preschoolers (40 boys).…

Aim: This study investigated whether components of attention and executive functioning improve when children with attention-deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are treated with osmotic-release oral system (OROS) methylphenidate. Method: Thirty children (24 males, six females; mean age 8y 6mo, SD 1y 11mo; range 6y 5mo-12y 6mo) with ADHD combined…

Dichotic listening originally was a means of studying attention. Half a century ago Doreen Kimura parlayed the dichotic method into a noninvasive indicator of lateralized cerebral language representation. The ubiquitous right-ear advantage (REA) for verbal material was accepted as a concomitant of left-sided language lateralization and…

The effect of cognitive load (CL) on speech recognition has received little attention despite the prevalence of CL in everyday life, e.g., dual-tasking. To assess the effect of CL on the interaction between lexically-mediated and acoustically-mediated processes, we measured the magnitude of the "Ganong effect" (i.e., lexical bias on phoneme…

Hyperactivity, impulsivity, and attention problems (HIA) in children and adolescents are stressful for parents. In this study, we used theories of parents' perceived power and attributions for youths' behaviors to develop a model to understand parents' reactions to their youths' HIA. We followed 706 youths (376 boys and 330 girls, aged 10-12 years…

Cognitive deficits in fibromyalgia may be specifically related to controlled processes, such as those measured by working memory or executive function tasks. This hypothesis was tested here by measuring controlled temporal preparation (temporal orienting) during a response inhibition (go no-go) task. Temporal orienting effects (faster reaction…

It is common to see students multitasking or switching between different tasks on the computer while also listening to the teacher lecture in the front of a classroom. In today's classrooms, students have much greater control over how they use their time, with the classroom integration of computers and mobile devices combined with social media and…

The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) is an instrument developed by Goodman for screening child and adolescent psychopathology. The aim of this study is to contribute to the analysis and validation of the internal structure of the Italian SDQ teacher version (SDQ-T). The SDQ-T was completed by 301 teachers, evaluating 3,302 children…

The present study investigated the development of executive functions (EFs) and their associations with performance and behavior at school in 8-12-year-old children. The EFs were measured by computer-based n-back, Continuous Performance and Go/Nogo tasks. School performance was evaluated by Teacher Report Form (TRF) and behavior by TRF and Child…

Prominent theorists assert that engaging in sociodramatic play is an essential activity for the development of self-regulation. This study proposed the use of sociodramatic play as an intervention tool for building self-regulation in kindergartners. In this study, two sociodramatic play intervention paradigms were compared to a control group. In…

A preschooler's ability to delay gratification in the waiting task is predictive of several developmental outcomes, despite this task's relatively low reliability level. Success in this task depends on the use of distraction strategies. The new Watch-and-Wait Task (WWT) has been developed to enhance reliability and to investigate whether the…

Although memory inhibition seems to underlie retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF), there is some controversy about the precise nature of this effect. Because normal RIF is observed in people with deficits in executive control (i.e., older adults), some have proposed that an automatic-like inhibitory process is responsible for the effect. On the…

In 2 separate studies, the idea is tested that the positive association between self-regulatory capacities and well-being is partly explained by the positive effect self-regulation has on the successful resolution of developmental crises in Eriksonian terms. In Study 1, attentional control, intimacy, and subjective well-being are assessed in 177…

This article presents guiding principles governing the design, implementation, and management of a point system to promote discipline and academic rigor in a secondary classroom. Four considerations are discussed: (1) assigning appropriate point values to integral classroom behaviors and tasks; (2) determining the relationship among consequences,…