Based on the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study Year-5 wave, 1,983 children were identified as Head Start eligible children (503 Head Start enrolled children, 1,435 Head Start eligible nonparticipant) to address: (1) How do child and family characteristics differ between Head Start participants and non-participants? (2) How do Head…

Numerical comparison is a primary measure of the acuity of children's approximate number system. Approximate number system acuity is associated with key developmental outcomes such as symbolic number skill, standardized test scores, and even employment outcomes (Halberda, Mazzocco, & Feigenson, 2008; Parsons & Bynner, 1997). We examined…

While age effects in reaction time (RT) tasks across the lifespan are well established for level of performance, analogous findings have started appearing also for indicators of intra-individual variability (IIV). Children are not only slower, but also display more variability than younger adults in RT. Yet, little is known about potential…

Previous research has shown that children aged 4-5 years, but not 2-3 years, show adult-like interference from a partner when performing a joint task (Milward, Kita, & Apperly, 2014). This raises questions about the cognitive skills involved in the development of such "corepresentation (CR)" of a partner (Sebanz, Knoblich, &…

Purpose: This study examined individual differences in English language learners' (ELLs) nonword repetition (NWR) accuracy, focusing on the effects of age, English vocabulary size, length of exposure to English, and first-language (L1) phonology. Method: Participants were 75 typically developing ELLs (mean age 5;8 [years;months]) whose exposure to…

Objective: Previous studies show that children with psychopathic traits may be less responsive to parenting. Although harsh/inconsistent parenting is associated with increased problem behaviors in children low on psychopathic traits, children high on psychopathic traits show consistently high levels of problem behavior regardless of negative…

Background: More limited working memory capacity and slower processing for language and cognitive tasks are characteristics of many children with language difficulties. Individual differences in processing speed have not consistently been found to predict language ability or severity of language impairment. There are conflicting views on whether…

Few studies have identified individual differences in vocational knowledge or its association with career aspirations or expectations of children. We investigated whether individual differences in grade, gender, academic achievement, and SES predict levels of vocational knowledge, and further examined the relationship between vocational knowledge…

The rate at which people process information appears to influence many aspects of cognition across the lifespan. However, many commonly accepted measures of "processing speed" may require goal maintenance, manipulation of information in working memory, and decision-making, blurring the distinction between processing speed and executive…

Attentional skills and home environment were examined as predictors of looking patterns during television viewing by 70 48- to 91-month-old children from low income families. Looking to the television was assessed in conditions without distractors and with continuous distractors. Looking patterns during television viewing reflected attentional…

Following resettlement in Western countries, unaccompanied refugee minors (URM) are at risk of developing posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It is unclear to what extent PTSD in this group may become manifest at later stages following resettlement and which factors are associated with late onset. We examined data from URM collected 1 (T1) and 2…

Post-institutionalized Chinese and Eastern European children participated in two emotion understanding tasks. In one task, children selected facial expressions corresponding to four emotion labels (happy, sad, angry, scared). The second task required children to match facial expressions to stories describing situations for these emotions. While…

Self-perceived competence was assessed for 60 8- 13-year-old children, grouped by learning disability and behavior disorder. Subjects included 15 controls and 3 groups of 15 learning-disabled children each ("normals," externalizers, and mixed symptomatology). Cognitive and social self-concept are as strongly related to behavioral factors…