This study examined developmental differences in, and cognitive bases of, coping flexibility in children with and without ADHD. Younger (age 7 to 8) and older (age 10 to 11) children with and without ADHD (N = 80) responded to hypothetical vignettes about problematic interactions with peers that shifted from controllable to uncontrollable over…

We consider the effects of daytime fasting by pregnant women during the lunar month of Ramadan on their children's test scores at age seven. Using English register data, we find that scores are 0.05 to 0.08 standard deviations lower for Pakistani and Bangladeshi students exposed to Ramadan in early pregnancy. These estimates are downward biased to…

This study seeks to investigate the impact of symmetrical (S) and Asymmetrical (AS) scaffolding, which are two types of scaffolding, on students' reading comprehension achievement of English as a Foreign Language (EFL). The study was done in two phases: In the first phase after administering a Pre-test, 52 homogeneous intermediate students were…

Games Based Learning needs to be linked to good learning theory to become an important educational intervention. This study examines the effectiveness of a collection of computer games called Neurogames®. Neurogames are a group of computer games aimed at improving reading and basic maths and are designed using neuropsychological theory. The…

The focus of this paper centers around timing associated with early childhood education programs and interventions using meta-analytic methods. At any given assessment age, a child's current age equals starting age, plus duration of program, plus years since program ended. Variability in assessment ages across the studies should enable everyone to…

This commentary pertains to the article, "Childhood Leukemia Survivors and Their Return to School: A Literature Review, Case Study, and Recommendations" by D. Scott Hermann, Jill R. Thurber, Kenneth Miles, and Gloria Gilbert in this issue (2011) regarding pediatric leukemia. The authors present a literature review regarding leukemia in…

The use of self-organizing feature maps (SOFM) in models of cognitive development has frequently been associated with explanations of "critical" or "sensitive periods". By contrast, error-driven connectionist models of development have been linked with "catastrophic interference" between new knowledge and old knowledge. We introduce a set of…

The relation between children's lie-telling and their social and cognitive development was examined. Children (3-8 years) were told not to peek at a toy. Most children peeked and later lied about peeking. Children's subsequent verbal statements were not always consistent with their initial denial and leaked critical information revealing their…

In this article, the authors aim to make accessible the careful application of a method called instrumental variables (IV). Under the right analytic conditions, IV is one promising strategy for answering questions about the causal nature of associations and, in so doing, can advance developmental theory. The authors build on prior work combining…

Advances in neuroscience are providing information about the brain and its development. Some researchers propose that childcare workers need to understand this information because it confirms their importance and their use of developmentally appropriate practice (DAP). Given the fact that childcare workers could benefit from this insight, it seems…

The prediction of events and the creation of expectancies about their time course is a crucial aspect of an infant's mental life, but temporal mechanisms underlying these predictions are obscure. Scalar timing, in which the ratio of mean durations to their standard deviations is held constant, enables a person to use an estimate of the mean for…

At the 2006 National Association of Gifted Children Conference, a panel presentation addressed the importance of providing gifted children with opportunities to take positive social action through service-learning; this article is a result of that discussion. The Future Problem Solving Program (among others) has a community problem-solving…

Adults have little difficulty perceiving objects as complete despite occlusion, but newborn infants perceive moving partly occluded objects solely in terms of visible surfaces. The developmental mechanisms leading to perceptual completion have never been adequately explained. Here, the authors examine the potential contributions of oculomotor…

Immordino-Yang's description of the unexpected recovery of 2 boys with severe brain trauma is an example of the interplay between the plasticity of the brain and the plasticity of the context. It highlights the dynamics of "wants and cans" and the specific role of motivation in this dynamic. As an example of how this dynamic can evolve in…

Adolescence is a time characterized by change--hormonally, physically, and mentally. We now know that some brain areas, particularly the frontal cortex, continue to develop well beyond childhood. There are two main changes with puberty. First, there is an increase in axonal myelination, which increases transmission speed. Second, there is a…