Temporal processing,attention, and learning disorders

In a large sample (N = 439) of literacy impaired and unimpaired elementary school children the predictions of the temporal processing theory of dyslexia were tested while controlling for (sub)clininal attentional deficits. Visual and Auditory Temporal Order Judgement were administered as well as three subtests of a standardized attention test. The correlation between visual and auditory TOJ was only moderate, challenging the assumption of a general, cross-modal temporal processing deficit. Regression analyses revealed attention as a significant predictor of children's TOJ performance. Once attentional differences were accounted for, temporal processing made a significant but small contribution (3% of variance explained) to reading (but not spelling), but also to arithmetic achievement, indicating that the prediction is not specific to literacy skills. Phonology and Rapid Automatized Naming explained considerable variance even when introduced after TOJ, contradicting the assumption that the verbal deficits in dyslexia result from temporal processing problems. Multiple case studies of 40 children with serious deficits in temporal processing revealed no consistent group pattern. Problems in temporal processing do not necessarily lead to literacy impairment but might be a marker of minor deviances in brain development.     

Accounting for individual variability in inversion shortcut use

This study investigated whether children's inversion shortcut use (i.e., reasoning that no calculations are required for the problem 4 × 8 ÷ 8, as the answer is the first number) is related to their analogical reasoning ability, short-term memory capacity, and working memory capacity. Children from Grades 6 and 8 solved multiplication and division inversion problems and classical analogy word problems and completed memory tasks. Analogical reasoning ability and working memory functioning both accounted for individual variance in inversion shortcut use. These findings suggest that the ability to understand relationships and executive functioning may enable children to internally represent and manipulate mathematical problems, facilitating the application of conceptual mathematical knowledge to generate the inversion shortcut.     

Students' self-perception of reading ability,enjoyment of reading and reading achievement

Using data from New Zealand's National Education Monitoring Project, a light sampling, low stakes performance based national school assessment program, reading self-efficacy, reading enjoyment, and reading achievement were examined in samples of 8 and 12 year old children. Sample sizes were n = 480 for each group. While reading achievement increased substantially in going from age 8 to age 12, reading enjoyment and reading self-efficacy declined. Girls outperformed boys in reading achievement and showed higher levels of reading enjoyment; differences in self-efficacy by gender were minimal. Results are discussed in terms of previous research and implications for instructional practice.     

Improving children's working memory and classroom performance

Previous research has demonstrated close relationships between working memory and children's scholastic attainment. The aim of the present study was to explore a method of improving working memory, using memory strategy training. Two hundred and fifty‐four children aged five to eight years were tested on measures of the phonological loop, visuo‐spatial sketchpad and central executive components of the multiple component model of working memory. Subgroups of children also completed tasks of following instructions and mental arithmetic in the classroom, and standardised tests of reading, arithmetic and mathematics. Half of the children then used Memory Booster, a computer game that teaches memory strategies, over a period of six to eight weeks. All the children were then retested on the memory and ability measures. The standardised tests were also administered five months later. The results revealed that working memory strategy training resulted in significant improvements in tasks assessing the phonological loop and central executive components of working memory, and tasks assessing following instructions and mental arithmetic in the classroom. However, no improvements were observed on standardised tests of reading, arithmetic or mathematics, either immediately following training or five months later. The results are discussed in terms of implications for educational practice.     

Executive function performance and trauma exposure in a community sample of children

ObjectiveThough children exposed to familial violence are reported to have difficulties with a range of emotional and behavioral problems (e.g., lower school achievement) that implicate executive function (EF) deficits, relatively little research has specifically examined EF as a function of trauma exposure in children.MethodsBased on parent report of children's exposure to potentially traumatic events, children (N = 110; Age_Mean = 10.39) from an ethnically diverse community sample were compared across three trauma-exposure groups: familial trauma, non-familial trauma, and no trauma. Children completed a battery of tests to assess working memory, behavioral inhibition, processing speed, auditory attention, and interference control.ResultsFamilial trauma (relative to non-familial and no trauma exposure) was associated with poorer performance on an EF composite (composed of working memory, inhibition, auditory attention, and processing speed tasks); the effect size was medium. Both trauma-exposure status and dissociation symptoms explained unique variance in EF performance after controlling for anxiety symptoms, socio-economic status, and potential traumatic brain injury. While IQ and EF performance were related, SES predicted unique variance in IQ (and not EF) scores, while familial-trauma exposure did not.ConclusionsThe contribution of trauma exposure to basic executive functioning held after taking into account symptoms (anxiety and dissociation), socio-economic status, and possible traumatic brain injury exposure. EF problems may provide one route via which maltreated children become at risk for peer, academic, and behavior problems relative to their peers.Practice implicationsEF problems may provide one route via which maltreated children become at risk for peer, academic, psychological, and behavior problems relative to their peers. Recently, intervention strategies have emerged in the anxiety and mood disorder treatment literatures that appear to effectively target EFs. As future research continues to specify the relationship between child trauma exposure and EF performance, these innovative treatments may have important practice implications for addressing EF deficits.     

Chronic undernutrition,short-term hunger,and student functioning in rural northwest China

Chronic undernutrition and hunger remain significant problems for children, in global perspective, and may have important implications for children's ability to function effectively at school. In this paper, we capitalize on a longitudinal data set of children in 100 villages in Gansu Province to estimate differences in achievement, behavior, and long-term persistence associated with chronic undernourishment and short term hunger. We show that chronic undernourishment and short-term hunger relate to children's school functioning in distinct ways: chronically undernourished children have poorer literacy acquisition and subsequent school persistence, while children who report subjective hunger have more behavioral problems.     

Relations between preschool attention span-persistence and age 25 educational outcomes

This study examined relations between children's attention span-persistence in preschool and later school achievement and college completion. Children were drawn from the Colorado Adoption Project using adopted and non-adopted children (N = 430). Results of structural equation modeling indicated that children's age 4 attention span-persistence significantly predicted math and reading achievement at age 21 after controlling for achievement levels at age 7, adopted status, child vocabulary skills, gender, and maternal education level. Relations between attention span-persistence and later achievement were not fully mediated by age 7 achievement levels. Logistic regressions also revealed that age 4 attention span-persistence skills significantly predicted the odds of completing college by age 25. The majority of this relationship was direct and was not significantly mediated by math or reading skills at age 7 or age 21. Specifically, children who were rated one standard deviation higher on attention span-persistence at age 4 had 48.7% greater odds of completing college by age 25. Discussion focuses on the importance of children's early attention span-persistence for later school achievement and educational attainment.     

Assertion strategies and aggression during early childhood: A short-term longitudinal study

Although research on assertion has made important advances in our understanding of young children's behavior within their peer group, there has been a significant limitation in that prior studies have generally not given attention to the gender specific social goals of girls. To advance the literature, this short-term longitudinal study uses a naturalistic observational measure of assertion, which includes assessments of relationally assertive behaviors. This multi-method study uses naturalistic observations of aggression and assertion (i.e., over 8, 860 min or 148 h of total observation) and teacher reports of assertion and sociometric status. Findings from the preschool sample (M = 49.68 months old; S.D. = 7.66) indicate that aggression subtypes and assertion strategies are related but conceptually unique constructs with differential predictions to indices of sociometric status. Ways in which these findings extend the developmental and early childhood literature are discussed.     

Reading ability and short-term memory: The role of phonological processing

The aim of the current study was to further explore the connection between verbal short-term recall and phonological processing for two purposes: (a) To investigate the basis of short-term memory deficits for children with reading disability, and (b) To further explore the origin of developmental verbal memory span increases.Using a variety of memory and phonological tasks, reading group comparisons were conducted testing third-grade good readers and poor readers, and developmental changes were studied with pre-kindergarten, first-grade and third-grade children. The main finding was that a strong relationship was observed between efficiency of phonological processes and capacity of verbal memory supporting the hypothesis that reducing phonological processing requirements in verbal short-term memory increases available resources for storage. No such relationship was found between phonological processing and nonverbal memory. This conclusion was supported by two findings: (a) The verbal short-term memory deficits in poor readers significantly correspond with less accurate phonological processing, and (b) Developmental increases in verbal STM are accompanied by more accurate and rapid execution of phonological tasks.     

Reading,phonological skills and short-term memory: interactive tributaries of development

Short-term memory, phonological processing and reading are associated abilities, but the causal relationships between them are yet to be determined. A longitudinal study of 40 children as they develop from 5 to 7 years old is analysed to investigate the interactive development of these skills. In children who have not yet begun to read it appears that phonological skills promote the acquisition of letter knowledge and that these two abilities, together with visual STM, lead the development of reading. The pattern changes once reading acquisition begins. LISREL analyses demonstrate that reading now promotes further growth of phonological skills and auditory STM, and these phonological skills in turn lead to the development of visual STM. The acquisition of reading makes relevant active phonological processing in short-term memory and thus stimulates the development of these skills.     

Language skills,mathematical thinking,and achievement motivation in children with ADHD,disruptive behavior disorders,and normal controls

Recent models of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) suggest that the association between achievement motivation and school performance may be stronger in children with ADHD than in typically developing children. Therefore, the present study investigated associations between achievement motivation and performance on language skills and mathematical thinking in children with ADHD (n = 23; M = 9.4 years, SD = 1.1 years; 78% boys) and two matched control groups, i.e., a clinical control group (children with related disruptive behavior disorders; DBD), and a non-clinical control group (NC). Results confirmed stronger associations between achievement motivation and performance on receptive language and mathematical thinking in children with ADHD than in NC. Specifically, performance of children with ADHD was equal to NC for highly motivated ADHD children. These results underscore the importance of achievement motivation as a more essential key factor in the performance of children with ADHD as compared to typically developing children.     

Inhibitory control and visuospatial working memory contribute to 5-year-old children's use of quantitative inversion

This study examined the hypothesis that general cognitive resources moderated 5-year-old children's performance differences between the Concrete Identical and the Pure Quantity conditions on inversion problems (a + b – b) but not on standard problems (a + b – c). Study 1 (N = 104) showed that children who experienced higher visuospatial working memory burden performed significantly poorer in solving the inversion problems in the Pure Quantity condition than in the Concrete Identical condition, whereas those who experienced lower working memory burden showed no such difference. Study 2 (N = 194) demonstrated that children with lower levels of inhibitory control solved significantly fewer inversion problems in the Pure Quantity condition than in the Concrete Identical condition, whereas no such difference was found in children with higher levels of inhibitory control. These findings suggest that inhibitory control and visuospatial working memory may support children's use of quantitative inversion.     

Working memory as a moderator of training and transfer of analogical reasoning in children

Working memory is related to children’s ability to solve analogies and other inductive reasoning tasks. The aim of this study was to examine whether working memory also plays a role in training and transfer effects of inductive reasoning in the context of a short training procedure within a pretest-training-posttest-transfer design. Participants were 64 children, aged 7–8 years (M = 7.6 years; SD = 4.7 months). All of the children were pre-tested on inductive reasoning and working memory tasks. The children were trained in figural analogy solving according to either the graduated prompts method or practice without feedback. The children were then post-tested on the trained task and three additional inductive reasoning measures. Regression models revealed that visuo-spatial working memory was related to initial performance on each of the inductive reasoning tasks (r ≈ .35). Children’s improvement from pretest to posttest in figural analogy solving, as measured with item response theory models, was somewhat related to visuo-spatial WM but not verbal WM scores or pretest scores. Furthermore, transfer of reasoning skills to an analogy construction task was related to initial ability, but not working memory; transfer to two inductive reasoning tasks with dissimilar content was not apparent. Performance change and ability to transfer trained skills to new tasks are not often used in psycho-educational assessment but may be separate constructs indicative of children’s learning and change.     

Parental Nurturance Promotes Reading Acquisition in Low Socioeconomic Status Children

Research Findings: Children require cognitive skills (e.g., phoneme awareness, verbal intelligence) and environmental resources (e.g., stimulation, print exposure) to acquire reading. This investigation examined the additional contribution of parental nurturance to literacy development during the transition from preschool to elementary school. Participants were 77 children attending Head Start, their primary caregivers, and their teachers. A variety of methods were used to measure nurturance (e.g., self-report, laboratory observation, home observation) and reading achievement (e.g., standardized testing and teacher report). Approximately 3½ years later, 52 families and 39 teachers were available for repeat assessments of children's reading achievement. After controlling for the variance accounted for by prior reading ability, phonological awareness, verbal reasoning ability, and home academic stimulation, parental nurturance made a significant unique contribution to children's growth in reading achievement. Results supported the hypothesis that caregiver nurturance can be an important ingredient in the recipe for literacy.

Practice: The findings have important implications for the design of interventions for children with low reading achievement. By understanding the various ways in which parents foster reading, interventions can be developed to bolster parental nurturance and support the role of nurturance in promoting children's development in all areas, including intellectual and academic functioning.     

Home environments and young Latino children's school readiness

This exploratory study examined the relations among characteristics of children's home environments and two school readiness skills: their oral language and social functioning. Low SES Latino mothers of 122 (65 girls; 57 boys) preschoolers (39–49 months (M = 45.00; S.D. = 5.40) completed questionnaires about their family demography, their home environments, and their perceived parenting stress. Preschool teachers rated children's social functioning, and children were administered the PPVT-R (or the TVIP). Results of path analyses showed that when controlling for children's age and factors that potentially influence children's opportunities for learning, the relation between parents’ literacy involvement and children's PPVT-R/TVIP scores and social functioning was mediated by children's interest in literacy. In addition, mothers’ perceived parenting stress was directly associated with children's PPVT-R/TVIP scores and social functioning. The findings highlight within-group variations in the home literacy environments of low SES Latino families.     

Short-term memory,phonological processing,and reading ability

Verbal short-term memory deficits are a common characteristic of children with reading problems and may markedly increase the difficulty of learning to read. Previous work suggests that the basis of the short-term memory deficit may involve limitations in phonetic coding. In the present paper, a series of experiments are reviewed which examined the role of phonological processes in short-term memory. First, a developmental study is described in which a significant relationship was found between phonetic processes and verbal memory span, but not between phonetic processes and nonverbal memory. Second, additional studies are reviewed which collectively found that children with reading problems are less accurate at phonetic encoding than are good readers, and that performance on phonetic processing corresponds with verbal memory span. No reading group differences were obtained on nonverbal perception or memory tasks. These findings suggest that both developmental and individual differences in verbal memory span are related to the efficiency of phonological processes. Practical implications of current cognitive research are discussed. The research was supported by NIH Grant HD-01994 to Haskins Laboratories.     

The Watch-and-Wait Task: On the reliability and validity of a new method of assessing self-control in preschool children

A preschooler's ability to delay gratification in the waiting task is predictive of several developmental outcomes, despite this task's relatively low reliability level. Success in this task depends on the use of distraction strategies. The new Watch-and-Wait Task (WWT) has been developed to enhance reliability and to investigate whether the waiting situation is equally predictive if distraction from the reward is inhibited. To prevent distraction in the WWT, children were instructed to watch an hourglass run out during the waiting period. In a reliability analysis (n = 31) the WWT showed acceptable retest reliability. In a second study (n = 61), the time preschoolers spent waiting in the WWT was associated with later academic achievement and behavioral problems diagnosed at the end of grade 1, even after controlling for intelligence, gender and age. Overall, the WWT proved to be a reliable instrument predictive of children's behavioral and academic development.     

Working memory, fluid intelligence, and science learning

A review of the history of working memory (WM) studies finds that the concept of WM evolved from short-term memory to a multi-component system. Comparison between contemporary WM models reveals: (1) consensus that the content of WM includes not only task-relevant information, but also task-irrelevant information; (2) consensus that WM consists of phonological and visuospatial components; (3) consensus that short-term memory storage is a function of WM; (4) disagreement as to whether an independent executive control is a necessary WM component; and (5) disagreement as to whether the control function is active or passive. Methods for measuring WM differed across studies with a preponderance of various dual-tasks; little psychometric work has been done on these measures. Correlational studies supported a close relationship between WM and measures of fluid intelligence and science achievement, but we found no experimental studies on the impact of WM training on science achievement. Finally we suggest how WM research findings may be applied to improve fluid intelligence and science achievement.     

Predicting word-level reading fluency outcomes in three contrastive groups: Remedial and computer-assisted remedial reading intervention,and mainstream instruction

The aim of the longitudinal intervention study was to build a model of predictive values of reading fluency in three contrastive reading groups: remedial and computer-assisted remedial reading intervention, and mainstream instruction, to identify the most effective type of intervention for children with different profiles of compromised pre-reading skills. The participants were 7-year-old Finnish school beginners (N = 166). Two remedial interventions took place in four weekly sessions of 45 min over a period of 28 weeks in Grade 1. For a child with deficits in the core pre-reading skills (letter knowledge, phonological awareness or rapid automatized naming), the computer-assisted remedial intervention would be the most successful in remediating reading fluency in the transparent Finnish language. Furthermore, children in the computer-assisted intervention were able to reach the average level of the mainstream children by the end of Grade 2.     

An evaluation of the written texts of children with SLI: the contributions of oral language, reading and phonological short-term memory

In this study, we performed a fine grained analysis of writing by children with a specific language impairment (SLI) and examined the contribution of oral language, phonological short-term memory (STM), nonverbal ability, and word reading to three writing constructs (productivity, complexity and accuracy). Forty-six children with SLI were compared with 42 children matched for chronological age, receptive vocabulary (N = 46) and reading decoding (N = 46) on a measure of narrative writing. The SLI group performed worse on all measures compared to children of a similar chronological age. The SLI group produced a greater proportion of orthographic spelling errors than children with similar receptive vocabularies, but were comparable to children matched for reading decoding. The children with SLI showed specific difficulties in the omission of whole words (e.g. auxiliary verbs and subject nouns) and omissions of grammatical morphology (e.g. past tense—ed) reflecting the difficulties shown in their oral language. Receptive grammar made a significant contribution to writing complexity and accuracy. Phonological fluency contributed to writing productivity, such as the production of diverse vocabulary, ideas and content and writing fluency. Phonological STM and word reading explained additional variance in writing accuracy over and above the SLI group’s oral language skills.