Research Findings: Fluent and legible handwriting is associated with longer texts and higher text quality and is therefore an important goal in the primary school curriculum. While girls' handwriting tends to be more proficient than boys', potential differences in the correlates of girls' and boys' early handwriting are poorly understood. In this…

Research Findings: The goal of this longitudinal study was to examine persistence development during the transition to school. The sample consisted of N = 88 children from Caucasian, middle-class families (51% female). Participants were recruited through advertisement in public kindergartens and were tested twice, in kindergarten (mean…

Research Findings: Early elementary school is a crucial time for the development of executive functions, but less is known about the impact of parent-child narratives on executive function development in children of this age group. This study aims to investigate the influence of parental scaffolding styles in parent-child co-constructed narratives…

Research Findings: This study investigated the bidirectional relations among paired associate learning (PAL), language-specific skills and Chinese word reading in kindergarten children from second year (K2) to third year (K3). We tested 204 children on four mapping conditions of PAL (i.e., visual-verbal, verbal-verbal, visual-visual, and…

Research Findings: The present study examined patterns of executive function (EF) development among socio-demographically diverse children in kindergarten, first grade, and second grade. Using nationally representative data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Kindergarten Cohort: 2011, we estimated children's growth in working memory and…

Research Findings: The purpose of this study is to advance our understanding of student-teacher ethnoracial matching in early elementary school by exploring two executive function outcomes -- working memory and cognitive flexibility. Drawing on nationally-representative, longitudinal sample of kindergartners (N = 18,170) from the Early Childhood…

Make-believe play has been theorized to promote self-regulation skills and other positive child outcomes. In this study, we examine the make-believe play approach featured in the "Tools of the Mind" (Tools) early childhood curriculum, which identifies students' self-regulation cultivation among its core programmatic aims. Using data from…

Research Findings: This study examined the interrelations between fine motor skills, executive functions, and basic numerical skills in kindergarten as well as their predictive value for mathematics achievement in 2nd grade in a sample of 136 children. Structural equation modeling techniques were used to uncover the unique predictive value and…

Nowadays, classrooms include children coming from a wide range of cultures and speaking different languages. Teachers are therefore challenged to create appropriate learning opportunities for very diverse children. The current study examined the unique contribution of general classroom interaction, individual teacher-child interactions and…

Research Findings: Children differ in their ability to adapt to elementary school. Yet, the family factors that foster a successful transition to elementary school are less well understood. Family cohesion as an indicator of a positive emotional climate within families may play an important role for children's ability to adapt to school. Thus,…

Research Findings: The present study examined patterns of longitudinal associations between inhibitory control (IC) and early academic skills during the preschool and kindergarten years. Using data from the Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey Cohort 2009 (FACES 2009) (N = 939), a national data set of predominantly low-income children…

Research Findings: The aim of this research was to delineate developmental processes that contribute to early school success. To achieve this aim, we examined emotion regulation, executive functioning, emotion knowledge, and metacognition at ages 3 and 4 as distal and proximal predictors of age 5 achievement and school adjustment in a sample of…

The present study investigated gender differences in social mastery motivation, vocabulary knowledge, behavioral self-regulation, and socioemotional skills and examined the relationships among this knowledge and these skills by gender. Participants were 134 Chinese children (68 boys, M age = 3.80; 66 girls, M age = 3.89) and their parents…

Research Findings: Students experienced a mindfulness program designed to enhance their self-regulation in prekindergarten and kindergarten. At the end of the 1st year of the program, these students showed improvements in teacher-reported executive function skills, specifically related to working memory and planning and organizing, whereas…

Research Findings: The objective of this study was to examine the student-teacher relationship as a potential moderator of the link between executive functioning (EF) and children's early school readiness among a clinical sample of preschoolers with externalizing behavior problems (EBP). Participants for the study included 139 preschool children…