The aim of this work was to gather different perspectives on the "key ingredients" involved in creative writing by children--from experts of diverse disciplines, including teachers, linguists, psychologists, writers and art educators. Ultimately, we sought in the experts' convergence or divergence insights on the relative importance of the…

In 2013-14, Letterland had strong implementation, with moderate to high fidelity within approximately 90% of Wake County Public School System (WCPSS) K-1 classrooms. The impact of Letterland on students' reading achievement was neutral to positive. A significantly higher percentage of WCPSS kindergarten students were at or above benchmark mid-year…

Research on memory functions and their applications is a vast field that has unfolded for decades; some important studies are sixty years old. However, the research has remained a well-kept secret of cognitive psychologists. Education faculties rarely teach memory specifics, so people working in education typically do not know about the above…

Children's preparedness for school is an important predictor of their eventual academic attainment, health, and personal success well into adulthood. Although kindergarten knowledge of numbers and vocabulary represent robust indicators of children's readiness to learn at school entry, theory and research suggest that self-directed learning skills…

This study evaluated the influence of the frequency of reading and writing habits (RWH) associated with education on the performance of adults in brief neuropsychological tasks. A sample of 489 Brazilian subjects, composed of 71% women, aged 21-80 years, with 2-23 years of formal education, was evaluated by the Brazilian Brief Neuropsychological…

Exergames are videogames that require gross motor activity, thereby combining gaming with physical activity. This study examined the role of competitive versus cooperative exergame play on short-term changes in executive function skills, following a 10-week exergame training intervention. Fifty-four low-income overweight and obese African American…

A total of 104 six-year-old children belonging to 4 groups (English monolinguals, Chinese-English bilinguals, French-English bilinguals, Spanish-English bilinguals) were compared on 3 verbal tasks and 1 nonverbal executive control task to examine the generality of the bilingual effects on development. Bilingual groups differed in degree of…

Background: Exposure to mathematical pattern tasks is often deemed important for developing children's algebraic thinking skills. Yet, there is a dearth of evidence on the cognitive underpinnings of pattern tasks and how early competencies on these tasks are related to later development. Aims: We examined the domain-specific and domain-general…

This study used data from six neuropsychological measures of executive function (EF) and general intellectual functioning (GIF) administered to 303 regular users of heroin and/or cocaine as indicators in a latent profile analysis (LPA). Results indicated the presence of three profiles: impaired GIF and EF profile (30.8%), intact GIF and EF profile…

In the present study, associations between executive functioning, metacognition, and self-perceived competence in the context of early academic outcomes were examined. A total of 209 children attending first grade were initially assessed in terms of their executive functioning and academic self-concept. One year later, children's executive…

The Pediatric Attention Disorders Diagnostic Screener is a multidimensional, computerized screening tool designed to assess attention and global aspects of executive functioning in children at risk for attention disorders. The screener consists of a semi-structured diagnostic interview, brief parent and teacher rating scales, 3 computer-based…

This paper presents a study of teachers' professional judgement in the area of summative assessment. It adopts a situated perspective on assessment practices in classroom and school settings. The study is based on interviews with 10 sixth-grade teachers and on the assessment documents they used when determining end-of-term grades in students'…

We studied developmental trends in 5 important reasoning tasks that are critical components of the operational definition of rational thinking. The tasks measured denominator neglect, belief bias, base rate sensitivity, resistance to framing, and the tendency toward otherside thinking. In addition to age, we examined 2 other individual difference…

Identifying and understanding the foundational skills children need to participate effectively in formal schooling is an important objective for research in early childhood education. One component of school readiness is cognitive self-regulation (CSR). The question this study addresses is how to assess CSR with prekindergarten-aged children in a…

The minimal control principle (Taatgen, 2007) predicts that people strive for problem-solving strategies that require as few internal control states as possible. In an experiment with the Abstract Decision Making task (ADM task; Joslyn & Hunt, 1998) the reward structure was manipulated to make either a low-control strategy or a high-strategy…