The transition to elementary school is accompanied by increasing demands for children to regulate their attention and behavior within the classroom setting. Executive control (EC) may be critical for meeting these demands; however, few studies have rigorously examined the association between EC and observed classroom behavior. This study examined…

The present longitudinal study aimed to investigate the development of word decoding skills during incremental phonics instruction in Dutch as a transparent orthography. A representative sample of 973 Dutch children in the first grade (M[subscript age] = 6;1, SD = 0;5) was exposed to incremental subsets of Dutch grapheme-phoneme correspondences…

The contributions of domain-general abilities and domain-specific knowledge to subsequent mathematics achievement were longitudinally assessed (n = 167) through 8th grade. First grade intelligence and working memory and prior grade reading achievement indexed domain-general effects, and domain-specific effects were indexed by prior grade…

We investigated direct and indirect effects of component skills on writing (DIEW) using data from 193 children in Grade 1. In this model, working memory was hypothesized to be a foundational cognitive ability for language and cognitive skills as well as transcription skills, which, in turn, contribute to writing. Foundational oral language skills…

Writing down spoken number words (transcoding) is an ability that is predictive of math performance and related to working memory ability. We analysed these relationships in a large sample of over 25,000 children, from kindergarten to the end of primary school, who solved transcoding items with a computer adaptive system. Furthermore, we…

We investigated direct and indirect effects of component skills on writing (DIEW) using data from 193 children in Grade 1. In this model, working memory was hypothesized to be a foundational cognitive ability for language and cognitive skills as well as transcription skills, which, in turn, contribute to writing. Foundational oral language skills…

The current study aimed at addressing two issues concerning children's estimation performance: (1) to investigate whether the log-to-linear framework or the proportional judgment framework provided a better explanation of children's estimation patterns, and (2) to examine the consistency of response patterns in different estimation tasks. A sample…

This study investigated whether measures of verbal working memory are less sensitive to children's socioeconomic background than traditional vocabulary measures. Participants were 120 school beginners, divided into high and low socioeconomic groups. The groups contained equal numbers of English first-language and second-language speakers. All were…

The primary aim of this study was determining Grade 1 cognitive predictors of students at risk for writing disabilities in Grades 2 through 4. Applying cognitive measures selected to align with theoretical and empirical models of writing, tasks were administered to Grade 1 students assessing fine-motor, linguistic, and executive functions: 84 at…

As the United States experiences greater income inequality, more and more students experience an early science achievement gap. This study tested several competing theoretical models of early science achievement with a longitudinal sample of 14,624 children who were followed from kindergarten entry to the end of 1st grade. To understand why and…

The primary aim of this study was determining Grade 1 cognitive predictors of students at risk for writing disabilities in Grades 2 through 4. Applying cognitive measures selected to align with theoretical and empirical models of writing, tasks were administered to Grade 1 students assessing fine-motor, linguistic, and executive functions: 84 at…

We investigated component language and cognitive skills of oral language comprehension of narrative texts (i.e., listening comprehension). Using the construction--integration model of text comprehension as an overarching theoretical framework, we examined direct and mediated relations of foundational cognitive skills (working memory and…

Emerging evidence suggests that children's sensitivity to suprasegmental phonology such as stress and timing (i.e., prosodic sensitivity) contributes to reading. The primary goal of this study was to investigate pathways of the relation of prosodic sensitivity to reading (word reading and reading comprehension) using data from 370 first-grade…

There are some children who encounter unexpected reading difficulties in the fourth grade. This phenomenon has been described as late emerging reading disabilities (LERD). Using Grade 4 as a starting point, this study examined the reading development of 964 children between kindergarten and Grade 7. The results showed that 72.0% of children had…

Despite numerous studies, the link between verbal working memory (WM) and calculation abilities remains poorly understood. The present longitudinal study focuses specifically on the role of serial order retention capacities, based on recent findings suggesting a link between ordinal processing in verbal WM and numerical processing tasks. Children…