While working memory (WM) is a powerful predictor for children's school outcomes, autistic children are more likely to experience delays. This study compared autistic children and their neurotypical peers' WM development over their elementary school years, including relative growth and period of plasticity. Using a nationally-representative…

We investigated the effect of cognitive training of executive functions on children's cognitive outcomes. To address this issue, a systematic meta-analysis of published research articles on cognitive training interventions was performed considering children's age, training duration, -procedure, and -technology in moderator analyses. The results (N…

The study identified the cognitive mechanisms that underly individual differences in mathematics and reading. There is little systematic evidence regarding the connections between cognitive capabilities, mathematics and reading among high-school students with typical development. Moreover, the study aimed to examine whether or not gender is…

Due to the diglossic nature of the Arabic language, Arabic-speaking children enter their first year of school with immaturity in literary language and word representations in their mental lexicon. This study examined the effects of interactive story reading in kindergarten on future reading skills and whether this effect can be generalized to…

Prominent theories of reading development have separately emphasized the relevance of children's skill in learning (Share, 2008) and lexical representations (Perfetti & Hart, 2002). Integrating these ideas, we examined whether skill in learning lexical representations is a mechanism that might explain children's reading development. To do so…

Usage-based theory has proposed that learning of linguistic constructions is facilitated by input that contains few high-frequency exemplars, in what is known as a skewed (or Zipfian) input distribution. Early empirical work provided support to this idea, but subsequent L2 research has provided mixed findings. However, previous approaches have not…

The processing of ordinally organized information is a characteristic of both serial-order working memory and numerical cognition. Serial positions of items presented within a list follow an ordinal organization when stored in working memory, whereas numbers are based on an ordinal structure stored in long-term memory. We tested the hypothesis…

This study (a) examines the role of cognitive abilities, age and vocabulary in the development of definitions and (b) compares the development of definitions (in content and form) in children with and without Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). Definitions have been extensively studied in (non-)impaired populations. So far, no studies have…

The present study aimed to examine the potential importance of orthographic flexibility for Chinese reading acquisition. Orthographic flexibility is a novel concept that represents the ability to manage and switch attention among multiple aspects of orthographic information. A total of 92 Chinese kindergarten children at age 6 were assessed on…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate executive control in adults who stutter (AWS) and adults who do not stutter (AWNS) via a nonspeech paradigm, wherein eye movements were monitored (i.e., antisaccade task). Processes involved in an antisaccade task include working memory, attention, and voluntary motor control, but the task…

The research studies presented in this special issue rest on two assumptions: firstly, that limitations in verbal short-term memory and verbal working memory (vSTM/WM) capacity are likely to be related to impairments in syntax, and secondly that this relationship is likely to be causal, with impairments in vSTM/WM causing impairments in syntax. In…

The deficit in verbal working memory (vWM) skills has been frequently reported in children with developmental language disorder (DLD) and may contribute to their problems in language. This study aimed to compare the phonological short-term memory (pSTM) and linguistic skills between Persian-speaking children with DLD and typical language…

The delayed match-to-sample task (DMS) is used to probe working memory (WM) across species. While the involvement of the PFC in this task has been established, limited information exists regarding the recruitment of broader circuitry, especially under the low- versus high-WM load. We sought to address this question by using a variable-delay…

Experimental measures of working memory that minimize rehearsal and maximize attentional control best predict higher-order cognitive abilities. These tasks fundamentally differ from clinically administered span tasks, which do not control strategy use. Participants engaged in concurrent articulation (to limit rehearsal) or concurrent tapping (to…

There has long been a hypothesized link between pretend play and self-regulation in childhood, and several recent studies have confirmed a positive relation between the two in children as young as preschool-age. However, no research to date has investigated whether this relation is present in toddlerhood. The purpose of the present study is to…