In individuals with Down syndrome (DS) deficits in verbal short-term memory (VSTM) and deficits in sentence comprehension co-occur, suggesting that deficits in VSTM might be causal for the deficits in sentence comprehension. The present study aims to explore the presumed relationship between VSTM and sentence comprehension in individuals with DS…

This study examined the contribution of self-reported metacognitive regulation of reading to expository digital text comprehension in an e-learning environment, completed at home, instead of a class or lab. Two hundred and nineteen college students read and answered questions about two low previous knowledge hypertexts, and reported metacognitive…

Most studies on the relationship between students' socioeconomic status (SES) and student achievement assume that its effects are sizable and causal. A large variety of theoretical explanations have been proposed. However, the SES-achievement association may reflect, to some extent, the inter-relationships of parents' abilities, SES, children's…

Previous research has shown that using gestures helps children remember more information. Here, we designed two studies to test whether children who gesture tend to rely on visuospatial cognitive resources more than children who do not gesture. We also test whether children who gesture demonstrate more creativity in their narrative productions.…

With nearly half of all children under age six living in poverty, it is imperative to explore the development of income-related childhood aggression. Here, we specifically examine how family socioeconomic status (SES) relates to children's physical and relational aggression, and how this relation may be moderated by burgeoning social cognition.…

Oral language abilities have been reported to be related to reading development. This relationship seems to be determined by orthographic systems and reading development. Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) show reading difficulties, although most studies focus on reading comprehension. The present study has two main objectives: to…

Dimensional comparisons, where students compare their achievements in different subjects, have a significant impact on the formation of students' subject-specific self-concepts. This research examines the influence of five moderators that have been shown in previous research to affect the strength of dimensional comparison effects: (1) the…

Children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are at increased risk of persistent language and literacy difficulties. This study investigated the effectiveness of an 8-week parent-implemented shared book reading intervention designed to change parent and child book reading behaviours. Sixteen parents and their preschoolers on the autism…

It is common in intervention research to use measures of working memory either as an explanatory or a control variable. This study examines the contribution of cognitive abilities, including verbal working memory (WM) and attention, to language performance in first- and second-grade children. We assessed children (N = 414) on two forms of verbal…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of an augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) app with transition to literacy (T2L) software features (i.e., dynamic text and speech output upon selection of a graphic symbol within the grid display) on the acquisition of 12 personally relevant single words for individuals with…

Previous studies have often compared and contrasted differences among media presentations, including traditional storybooks and videos and their potential for incidental word learning among preschoolers. Studies have shown that children learn words from a variety of media, and that repetition is an important source for incidental learning. Yet, to…

As a spoken word unfolds over time, similar sounding words ("cap" and "cat") compete until one word "wins". Lexical competition becomes more efficient from infancy through adolescence. We examined one potential mechanism underlying this development: lexical inhibition, by which activated candidates suppress…

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.…

The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) is a widely used test of receptive vocabulary, but no researchers to date have examined the performance of low-educated, low-literate L2 adults, or compared these individuals' performances to their more highly educated peers. In this study, we used many-facet Rasch analysis and mixed-effects linear…

This study centered on emergent bilingual (EB) students with specific reading comprehension deficits (S-RCD), that is, with poor reading comprehension despite solid word identification skills. The participants were 209 students in Grades 2 to 4, including both EBs and English monolinguals (EMs) with and without S-RCD. Mean comparisons indicated…