Number sense is fundamental to the development of numerical problem-solving skills. In early childhood, children establish associations between non-symbolic (e.g., a set of dots) and symbolic (e.g., Arabic numerals) representations of quantity. The developmental estrangement theory proposes that the relationship between non-symbolic and symbolic…

Addressing racial bias in early childhood is crucial for fostering inclusivity and reducing social inequalities. This study examined the effectiveness of individuation training in reducing racial bias among Canadian preschool-aged children and explored how interracial contact might influence changes in children's implicit anti-Black bias. A total…

Children engage cognitive control reactively when they encounter conflicts; however, they can also resolve conflicts proactively. Recent studies have begun to clarify the mechanisms that support the use of proactive control in children; nonetheless, sufficient knowledge has not been accumulated regarding these mechanisms. Using behavioral and…

Visual information conveyed by a speaking face aids speech perception. In addition, children's ability to comprehend visual-only speech (speechreading ability) is related to phonological awareness and reading skills in both deaf and hearing children. We tested whether training speechreading would improve speechreading, phoneme blending, and…

Spatial skills support STEM learning and achievement. However, children from low-socioeconomic (SES) backgrounds typically lag behind their middle- and high-SES peers. We asked whether a digital educational app--designed to mirror an already successful, spatial assembly training program using concrete materials--would be as effective for…

A form-preparation task in the language production field was adopted to examine output phonological representations in Chinese dyslexia and their susceptibility to training. Forty-one Chinese children with dyslexia (7-11 years old) and 36 chronological age controls completed this task. The controls demonstrated a marginally significant syllable…

Dyslexia has frequently been related to atypical auditory temporal processing and speech perception. Results of studies emphasizing speech onset cues and reinforcing the temporal structure of the speech envelope, that is, envelope enhancement (EE), demonstrated reduced speech perception deficits in individuals with dyslexia. The use of this…

Musical instrument training has been linked to improved academic and cognitive abilities in children, but it remains unclear why this occurs. Moreover, access to instrument training is not always feasible, thereby leaving less fortunate children without opportunity to benefit from such training. Although music-based video games may be more…

Working memory training has been shown to improve performance on untrained working memory tasks in typically developing children, at least when compared to non-adaptive training; however, there is little evidence that it improves academic outcomes. The lack of transfer to academic outcomes may be because children are only learning skills and…

Studies have shown that numerosity-based arithmetic training can promote arithmetic learning in typically developing children as well as children with developmental dyscalculia (DD), but the cognitive mechanism underlying this training effect remains unclear. The main aim of the current study was to examine the role of visual form perception in…

There is an established association between children's oral vocabulary and their word reading but its basis is not well understood. Here, we present evidence from eye movements for a novel mechanism underlying this association. Two groups of 18 Grade 4 children received oral vocabulary training on one set of 16 novel words (e.g., 'nesh', 'coib'),…

Sleep plays an active role in memory consolidation. Because children with Down syndrome (DS) and Williams syndrome (WS) experience significant problems with sleep and also with learning, we predicted that sleep-dependent memory consolidation would be impaired in these children when compared to typically developing (TD) children. This is the first…

The capacity to tell the difference between two faces within an infrequently experienced face group (e.g. other species, other race) declines from 6 to 9 months of age unless infants learn to match these faces with individual-level names. Similarly, the use of individual-level labels can also facilitate differentiation of a group of non-face…

Long-term deprivation of normal visual inputs can cause perceptual impairments at various levels of visual function, from basic visual acuity deficits, through mid-level deficits such as contour integration and motion coherence, to high-level face and object agnosia. Yet it is unclear whether training during adulthood, at a post-developmental…

The present study examined whether perceptual individuation training with other-race faces could reduce preschool children's implicit racial bias. We used an "angry = outgroup" paradigm to measure Chinese children's implicit racial bias against African individuals before and after training. In Experiment 1, children between 4 and 6 years…