Poor sleep is thought to interfere with children's learning and academic achievement (AA). However, existing research and theory indicate there are factors that may mitigate the academic risk associated with poor sleep. The purpose of this study was to examine the moderating role of children's effortful control (EC) on the relation between sleep…

Young children often provide ambiguous referential statements. Thus, the ability to identify when miscommunication has occurred and subsequently repair messages is an essential component of communicative development. The present study examined the impact of listener feedback and children's executive functioning in influencing children's ability to…

Substitute object pretense is one of the earliest-developing forms of pretense, and yet it changes considerably across the preschool years. By 3.5 years of age, children can pretend with substitutes that are highly dissimilar from their intended referents (Elder & Pederson, 1978), but even older children have difficulty understanding such…

This study brought together 2 literatures--gesturing and executive function--in order to examine the possible role of gesture in children's executive function. Children (N = 41) aged 2½-6 years performed a sorting-shift executive function task (Dimensional Change Card Sort). Responses of interest included correct sorting, response latency,…

Previous studies have demonstrated that various psychosocial risks are associated with poor cognitive functioning in children, and these risks frequently cluster together. In the current longitudinal study, we tested a model in which it was hypothesized that cumulative psychosocial adversity of mothers would have deleterious effects on children's…