Metacognition--knowledge, monitoring, and regulation of cognition--is key to learning and academic achievement. This is robustly supported for K-12 and higher education learners while empirical evidence in early childhood is encouraging but limited. To address these gaps in the literature, our first goal was to investigate early metacognition…

Temperamental effortful control (EC) and executive functions (EF) are two frameworks for studying self-regulation in children. Despite stemming from different research traditions, they show many conceptual and theoretical similarities and their corresponding tasks are often used interchangeably. However, little is known about how and whether the…

Research shows that epistemic cognition can support reasoning about the inclusion of diverse children. We argue that, to engage in such reasoning, children need the capacity to consider and evaluate competing knowledge perspectives (epistemic cognition) and to be cognitively flexible. Cognitive flexibility involves a subset of skills within the…

Social communication and executive functioning challenges as well as co-occurring anxiety/depression may make acquiring the skills needed to manage daily life tasks difficult for diploma-track autistic youth, thus limiting their participation in adult roles. This study describes the associations between executive function, social communication…

Despite frequent reliance on teacher and parent ratings of children's behavior for multi-informant assessment, agreement between teachers' and parents' ratings is low. This study examined the predictive utility of teacher and parent ratings for children's self-regulatory outcomes (i.e., executive function, continuous performance task) in four…

Middle schoolers with or at risk for emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) typically have a trajectory of difficult outcomes (e.g., school dropout, incarceration). Growing evidence suggests that the continuum of behavioral competence to challenges is closely linked to students' neurocognitive executive function (EF) capacities, perceived stress…

The aim of this study was to analyze the moderating effect of distress tolerance (DT) on the relationship between executive functions and academic performance (AP). Participants were 270 children aged 9-12 years. Executive functions (EFs)--working memory (WM), inhibition, and cognitive flexibility--and DT were evaluated using computerized tasks.…

Writing is a complex task that requires the activation and coordination of several processes. In addition to the research on the domain-specific factors that contribute to school achievement, there is an increasing interest on general variables, such as mindfulness. Here, we aimed to test the contribution of middle-grade students' trait…

The present study presents the first attempt at investigating long-term mindfulness training in pre-adolescence, adopting an integrative neurodevelopmental approach. Pupils with an established mindfulness practice (n=33) were compared with mindfulness-inexperienced pupils (n=20) on dispositional mindfulness, executive functioning (EF), emotion…

Emerging evidence suggests interventions can improve childhood self-regulation. One intervention approach that has shown promise is Taekwondo martial arts instruction, though little is known about its acceptability among stakeholders or its mechanisms of effect. We extend evidence on Taekwondo interventions in three ways: (1) testing the efficacy…

The present study evaluated: (1) the effects of two training programs designed for promoting Theory of Mind (ToM) skills in children aged 7/8; and (2) the relations between second-order recursive thinking (II-order-RT), advanced-ToM (Adv_ToM) and metacognition. Ninety-one 7- to 8-year-old children were assigned to one of three training conditions:…

Inhibitory control is considered a core component of self-regulation. Tremendous advances in early childhood have been attributed to brain maturation processes as well as environmental influences, such as parental co-regulation. Parental self-efficacy represents a key correlate of parenting behaviors and is associated with child outcomes. However,…

Conflict adaptation is key in how children self-regulate and assert cognitive control in a given situation compared with a previous experience. In the current study, we analyzed event-related potentials (ERPs) to identify age-related differences in conflict adaptation. Participants of different ages (5-year-old children, 10-year-old children, and…

Research Findings: Recent research has explored relations between classroom quality and child executive function (EF), but little is known about how teachers' well-being, including stress, relates to child EF--a crucial component of self-regulation. We hypothesized that teacher stress is negatively or curvilinearly related to child EF and…

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is frequently associated with learning disabilities. The present study examined the written composition of children with ADHD, which depends to a large degree on continuous self-regulation and attentional control skills for organizing information and maintaining the level of effort. Fifty children…