A major controversy facing the field of gifted education is the underrepresentation of low income, minority, and dual language students. Strategies for addressing this challenge have been to use universal screening and local norms; however, these useful recommendations continue to focus on traditional testing procedures that measure what students…

The diagnostic utility of the Woodcock-Johnson III Tests of Cognitive Abilities and Clinical Clusters was assessed in a sample of 52 children (26 Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disordered (ADHD) and 26 matched controls). Multivariate analysis of variance followed by post-hoc testing and d-ratios yielded some statistically significant and…

The present study aims to examine the contribution of cognitive flexibility to metalinguistic skills and reading comprehension during primary school years. Forty-nine third-grade primary school children completed the measures of cognitive flexibility, metalinguistic skills including syntactic awareness (word order knowledge), morphosyntactic skill…

Previous research has indicated that young children's executive functions (EFs) can be bolstered through role-play [e.g. the 'Batman™ effect'; White et al.]. However, what is not clear is whether it is the role-playing of another's perspective, or something about the role played, which is responsible for the Batman™ effect. The current experiment…

Aggression in early childhood has been found to predict negative outcomes later in life, including delinquency and psychopathology. The present study explored associations between young children's language, self-regulation, and physical aggression. A community sample of 126 preschool children aged 3 to 6 years (M = 4.87 years, SD = 0.87; 59% boys)…

Cognitive abilities, executive functions (EFs) and patterning, and simple measures of early literacy and mathematics were measured for 275 kindergartners during the second and third month of formal schooling. An exploratory factor analysis revealed four factors. The first was a literacy factor, to which a number series scale made a small…

Children across the United States are increasingly learning academic content through two-way dual-language education (http://www.cal.org/twi/). This education model provides instruction through two languages in classrooms comprised of approximately equal numbers of native and non-native English speakers. For both language groups, this educational…

The Canadian Little Developmental Coordination Disorder Questionnaire (Little DCDQ-CA) is a parent-report screening instrument that identifies 3- to 4-year-old children who may be at risk for Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD). We tested the criterion validity of the Little DCDQ-CA in a sample of preschool-aged children in the United States…

Efforts to increase moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) in school-age children are associated with improved health, cognitive, and academic outcomes. However, questions remain about whether similar benefits are observed in early childhood. We hypothesized that motor competence, not MVPA, would be related to improved cognitive and…

Social Emotional Learning (SEL) programs abound in schools worldwide, adopted in large part on limited and varied evidence that the social/SEL skills acquired in these programs contribute to academic achievement. However, large-scale studies with the most common SEL program in the United States (Second Step®) have yielded no evidence of academic…

Background: The aim of this study was to determine the clinical efficacy of combining self-management strategies and a social thinking approach to address the social performance and executive function of an adolescent female with autism spectrum disorder. Method: This research examined the effects of a social knowledge training program,…

Understanding fraction magnitudes is important for achievement and in daily life. However, adults' fraction reasoning sometimes appears to reflect whole number bias and other times reflects accurate reasoning. In the current experiments, we examined how contextual factors and individual differences in executive functioning (Experiment 1),…

Background: We examined longitudinal academic achievement and neuropsychological functioning across two time points in young students with Down syndrome (DS) and a typically developing (TD) comparison group equated on nonverbal mental age (NVMA). Method: Participants engaged in assessments of academic achievement, executive function (EF), and…

The goal of the current study was to investigate the role of executive functions in mathematical creativity. The sample included 278 primary school children (ages 8-13). Two models were compared: the starting model tested whether executive functions (shifting, updating, and inhibition), domain-general creativity, and mathematical ability directly…

The current study is the first to provide a comprehensive examination of the activation--decision--construction model (Walczyk, Roper, Seemann, & Humphrey, 2003, 2009) in relation to young children's lie-telling and lie maintenance. Young children (3 to 4 years of age, N = 93) completed the temptation-resistance paradigm to elicit a…