The present study used data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study--Kindergarten Cohort of 2011 (N = 15,827; 51.1% male; 48.4% White, 13.5% Black/African-American, 24.3% Hispanic/Latino, 7.5% Asian, and 6.3% other ethnicity) to examine the unique contribution of specific executive function processes (working memory and cognitive flexibility)…

Social communication and executive functioning challenges as well as co-occurring anxiety/depression may make acquiring the skills needed to manage daily life tasks difficult for diploma-track autistic youth, thus limiting their participation in adult roles. This study describes the associations between executive function, social communication…

This paper reports on a framework of thinking, memory and learning that emerged from a qualitative research study into the nature of learning for individuals with autism. The framework is useful for professional development of teachers regarding the learning characteristics of neurodiverse students with autism spectrum disorder. The paper provides…

Autistic adults are at risk of stress-related psychiatric disorders and reduced life quality due to social, cognitive, and perceptual challenges. Mental health interventions adapted to autistic adults are scarce. Acceptance and commitment therapy has preliminarily indicated health benefits in autistic adults, although it has not been robustly…

The purpose of the study is to examine the role of spatial ability and attention shifting in reading of illustrated science texts. Thirty-five fourth/fifth elementary students read two science texts. Prior knowledge and retention/transfer learning outcomes were measured using researcher-developed measures. While reading, students' eye movements…

A previous study found that task shifting and fluid intelligence, but not working memory capacity (WMC) and prior knowledge, influenced the worked example effect (Schwaighofer, Bühner, & Fischer, 2016). To increase confidence in these findings, we report a preregistered extended replication study of Schwaighofer et al.'s investigation.…

Using data from a large longitudinal sample (N = 1,292) of children and their caregivers in predominantly low-income, nonurban communities, we investigated longitudinal relations between attuned caregiving in infancy, joint attention in toddlerhood, and executive functions in early childhood. The results from path analysis demonstrated that…

Science learning requires visuospatial thinking. Accordingly, spatial ability is regarded as the key to learning science well, but its effects are sometimes not as significant as expected. To this end, this research aims to conceptualize spatial abilities and to clarify their relation to science learning based on an analysis of empirical studies.…

Walk into most Catholic schools (pre- and post COVID-19) these days and they look very similar to the Catholic schools from 50 years ago. The tradition, the familiarity, and the similarity are comforting and classic. However, in the past 50 years a revolution has happened in education. Educational research across many domains has revealed ways to…

Executive functioning is thought to contribute to adaptive behavior skills development in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, supporting data are largely based on caregiver reports of executive functioning. The current study evaluated whether performance-based measures of executive functioning (working memory and inhibition)…

The present study investigated the executive functioning of working memory, inhibition, shifting, and planning in Chinese adolescent readers with dyslexia and how they related to Chinese (L1) and English (L2) reading comprehension. Fifty-seven Hong Kong Chinese students at Grade 7 were compared with 57 typically developing readers of…

Compared with children, adults are widely assumed to possess more mature moral understanding thus justifying deference to their moral authority and testimony. This paper examines philosophical discussions regarding this child-adult moral relation and its implications for moral education, particularly accounts suggesting that the moral status of…

The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which children's executive function predicted their reading comprehension performance. Participants were approximately 18,000 kindergartners in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010-2011. The results suggest that individual differences in reading comprehension were…

Although electrophysiological (electroencephalography) measures of executive functions (e.g. error monitoring) have been used to predict academic achievement in typically developing children, work investigating a link between error monitoring and academic skills in children with autism spectrum disorder is limited. In this study, we employed…

Previous studies have documented that individual differences in fine and gross motor skills are associated with executive function (EF) skills. This study used an experimental design to test whether participating in cognitively challenging motor skills activities was causally related to improvements in motor skills and two key indicators of school…