Many adolescent learners have difficulty understanding the relevance of mathematics for their lives. This problem is particularly pernicious among Black and Latino adolescents who often face cultural stigma that can affect their perceived value of mathematics. The present study used concurrent nested mixed methods to explore this issue in 419…

Learning disabilities are associated with mental health, behavioural and social difficulties. Developmental dyslexia is a particularly salient example of a learning disability that is associated with social and emotional consequences that are not considered primary features of the disorder. These issues can remain and, in some cases, escalate in…

This investigation considered the short-term benefits of early childhood education participation at age 3 for 1,213 children from low-income families living in a large and linguistically diverse county. Although no benefits emerged for executive functioning, children who participated in formal early childhood programs at the age of 3 entered pre-K…

Introduction: School readiness predicts both school and life success, so measuring it effectively is extremely important. Current school readiness tests focus on pre-academic skills; however, mastery motivation (MM: persistent, focus on trying to do a task) and executive functions (EF: planful self-control) are also crucial. Method: The purpose of…

Background: Autism is generally associated with poor functional outcome but little is known about predictors of quality of life, especially during early adulthood. This study was conducted to assess subjective quality of life during early adulthood in high-functioning autism spectrum disorder and its relation with self-regulating abilities.…

This brief leverages the first ever nationally representative data set with a direct assessment of elementary school-aged children's executive function skills to examine racial and socioeconomic gaps in performance. The analysis reveals large gaps in measures of working memory and cognitive flexibility, the two components of executive function…

The goal of this study was to examine the relationship between the quality of classroom interactions in kindergarten and executive functions (EFs) among 5-year-old children. The sample consisted of 118 children, with a mean age of 73.34 months (SD = 4.22), from 12 kindergarten classes. The quality of classroom interactions was measured using the…

Integrating physical activity into the curriculum has potential health and cognitive benefits in primary school children. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of physically active academic lessons on cardiovascular fitness, muscular fitness and executive functions. In the current randomized controlled trial, 499 second and third…

Background: The developmental relationships between executive functions (EF) and early language skills are unclear. This study explores the longitudinal relationships between children's early EF and language skills in a sample of children with a wide range of language abilities including children at risk of dyslexia. In addition, we investigated…

Substantial research has identified the negative health outcomes associated with bullying for adolescent victims. Researchers have examined expressive writing as a possible method by which to decrease violence among adolescents. Results of these studies, however, suggest that expressive writing is associated with positive, negative, and neutral…

Computerized training systems offer a promising new direction in the training of executive functions, in part because they can easily be designed to offer feedback to learners. Yet, feedback is a double-edged sword, serving a positive motivational role while at the same time carrying the risk that learners may become dependent on the feedback they…

Research examining cognition and science learning has focused on working memory, but evidence implicates a broader set of executive functions. The current study examined executive functions and learning of biology in young adolescents. Fifty-six participants, aged 12-13?years, completed tasks of working memory (Spatial Working Memory), inhibition…

A debated question in the cognitive control field is whether cognitive control is best conceptualized as a collection of distinct control mechanisms or a single general purpose mechanism. In an attempt to answer this question, previous studies have dissociated two well-known effects related to cognitive control: sequential congruence and…

Reading comprehension is influenced by sources of variance associated with the reader and the task. To gain insight into the complex interplay of multiple sources of influence, we employed crossed random-effects item response models. These models allowed us to simultaneously examine the degree to which variables related to the type of passage and…

Working memory (WM) generally refers to the human ability to temporarily maintain and manipulate a limited amount of information in immediate consciousness when carrying out complex cognitive tasks such as problem-solving and language comprehension. Though much controversy has surrounded the WM concept since its inception by Baddeley & Hitch…