This study examined the relation of 3-year core information-processing abilities to lexical growth and development. The core abilities covered four domains--memory, representational competence (cross-modal transfer), processing speed, and attention. Lexical proficiency was assessed at 3 and 13 years with the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT)…

A controversial issue in the field of language development is whether language emergence and growth is dependent solely on processes specifically tied to language or could also depend on basic cognitive processes that affect all aspects of cognitive competence (domain-general processes). The present article examines this issue using a large…

Examined the effects of premature birth on ninety 11-year-olds' memory and processing speed, using the new Cognitive Abilities Test (CAT). Found that preterm subjects performed more poorly than their full-term counterparts on all CAT memory tasks, and that preterms were also slower on selected aspects of processing speed but not on motor speed.…

Studied the extent to which memory and processing speed accounted for relations between infant information processing and childhood IQ. Found that the relationship of 7-month visual recognition memory and 1-year cross-modal transfer to 11-year IQ were reduced when statistically controlled for factors derived from these measures, suggesting that…