The study aimed to investigate the effect of a training program on improving working memory for students with learning difficulties in reading Arabic. The study sample consisted of (10) students with learning disabilities from Basic Education students from the fifth and sixth grades, and those between the ages (10-11) years as a pilot group and…

Differentiation hypotheses concern changes in the structural organization of cognitive abilities that depend on the level of general intelligence (ability differentiation) or age (developmental differentiation). Part 1 of this article presents a review of the literature on ability and developmental differentiation effects in children, revealing…

Providing the support that children need to build cognitive skills (i.e. working memory and processing speed) has come to the forefront for special educators today. This study investigated how fourth-grade students within an experimental classroom (N=14) and special education students within a small group setting (N=9) improved their working…

We examined the predictive value of early spelling for later reading performance by analyzing data from 970 U.S. children whose spelling was assessed in the summer following the completion of kindergarten (M age = 6 years; 3 months). The word reading performance of most of the children was then tested after the completion of Grade 1 (age 7;5),…

Both early childhood maternal language input and the quality of classroom instruction in elementary school have been shown to be important environmental supports in predicting children's literacy skill development. However, no studies have simultaneously examined these two environmental supports in relation to children's early language skills and…

Many people have serious difficulties in understanding rational numbers, limiting their ability to interpret and make use of them in modern daily life. This also leads to later difficulties in learning more advanced mathematical content. In this study, novel tasks are used to measure 263 late primary school students' spontaneous focusing on…

In 19 (sub)samples from seven countries (United States, Austria, Germany, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Vietnam, Brazil), we analyzed the impact of parental education compared with wealth on the cognitive ability of children (aged 4-22 years, total N = 15,297). The background of their families ranged from poor indigenous remote villagers to academic…

In Finland, schools' effectiveness in fostering the development of transversal skills is evaluated through large-scale learning to learn (LTL) assessments. This article presents how LTL skills--general cognitive competences and learning-related motivational beliefs--develop during primary school and how they predict pupils' CPS skills at the end…

We studied developmental trends in 5 important reasoning tasks that are critical components of the operational definition of rational thinking. The tasks measured denominator neglect, belief bias, base rate sensitivity, resistance to framing, and the tendency toward otherside thinking. In addition to age, we examined 2 other individual difference…