The goal of the present study was to test theories about the extent to which individual differences in word reading align with those in spelling and the extent to which other cognitive and linguistic skills play different roles in word reading and spelling. Using data from 1,116 children ranging from 8 to 17 years, we modeled word reading and…

Proactive interference (PI) occurs when previously learned memories compete with currently relevant information. Despite extensive literature investigating the effect in adults, little work has been done in young children. In three preregistered studies (N = 38, 35, 172; convenience samples from the Northeastern United States), first, we showed…

Purpose: To understand complex expository text, readers often engage in metacognitive comprehension monitoring. Metacognitive monitoring is assumed to rely on basic cognitive abilities (working memory updating, short-term memory, verbal intelligence). These abilities decrease in later adulthood. We thus compared younger and older adults in their…

In this paper, we decompose selective sustained attending behavior into components of continuous attention maintenance and attentional transitions and study how each of these components develops in young children. Our results in two experiments suggest that changes in children's ability to return attention to a target locus after distraction…

Purpose: This cross-sectional study investigated the development of voice recognition (VR) from childhood to adulthood and the relationship between VR and two linguistic skills (i.e., phonological awareness [PA] and phonological working memory [PWM]). Method: The participants, comprising 25 children (aged 8-9 years), 25 adolescents (aged 12-13…

When we monitor our learning, often measured via judgments of learning (JOLs), this metacognitive process can change what is remembered. For example, prior work has demonstrated that making JOLs enhances memory for related, but not unrelated, word pairs in younger adults. In the current study, we examined potential age-related differences in…

Histone acetylation, catalyzed by e, has emerged as a promising therapeutic strategy in Alzheimer's disease (AD). By longitudinally characterizing spatial memory at 3, 6, and 9 mo of age, we show that acute activation and inhibition of the histone acetyltransferase PCAF remediated memory impairments in 3xTG-AD mice in an age-related bidirectional…

In 2020, 21.5% of US preschoolers spoke a language other than English at home. These children transition into English-speaking classrooms in different ways, often handling foundational concepts in two languages. Critically, some knowledge may be dependent on the language of learning. For instance, both bilingual children and adults typically…

Childhood is a period when memory consolidation and knowledge base undergo rapid changes. The present study examined short-delay (overnight) and long-delay (after a 2-week period) consolidation of new information either congruent or incongruent with prior knowledge in typically developing 6- to 8-year-old children (n = 32), 9- to 11-year-old…

Age, babble noise, and working memory have been found to affect the recognition of emotional prosody based on non-tonal languages, yet little is known about how exactly they influence tone-language-speaking children's recognition of emotional prosody. In virtue of the tectonic theory of Stroop effects and the Ease of Language Understanding (ELU)…

This longitudinal study explores the associations between children's executive functions at the beginning of preschool and their learning behaviors, namely competence motivation and attentional persistence, at the end of preschool. Participants were 218 Portuguese children (M[subscript age]= 40.4 months, SD= 4.2; 52% boys) and their preschool…

Spatial skills are critical for learning in STEM areas and are affected by spatial anxiety and working memory. Prior work also showed that there are interaction effects between spatial anxiety and verbal working memory (WM) on spatial skills, such that the negative relation between spatial anxiety and spatial skills is stronger among higher- than…

Mind-wandering (MW) is a universal cognitive process that is estimated to comprise [approximately] 30% of our everyday thoughts. Despite its prevalence, the functional utility of MW remains a scientific blind spot. The present study sought to investigate whether MW serves a functional role in cognition. Specifically, we investigated whether MW…

Free-recall paradigms have greatly influenced our understanding of memory. The majority of this research involves laboratory-based events (e.g., word lists) that are studied and tested within minutes. This literature shows that adults recall events in a temporally organized way, with successive responses often coming from neighboring list…

We investigated whether selective discussion of autobiographical memory narratives would impact the quality of young people's recall of their nondiscussed memory narratives. Children (ages 8-9 years, n = 65) and adolescents (ages 13-15 years, n = 58) completed an adapted version of the retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF) paradigm for self-generated…