Fraction arithmetic facility is fundamental to learning more advanced math topics. However, attaining the ability to add and subtract fractions is hard for many students. The present longitudinal study examined students' growth on simple addition and subtraction word problems between fourth and sixth grades (N = 536). Latent class growth analyses…

This longitudinal study examined story-writing development of students from Grade 4 to Grade 6, comparing the developmental trajectories of English as a first language (EL1s; n = 43) and English learners (ELs; n = 108) in general, and in groups of EL1s and ELs with typically developing and poor reader profiles. In relation to their EL1 or EL…

This study addresses whether reading involves a process termed semantic and phonological ability to adjust recoding (SPAAR). It was hypothesized that SPAAR helps readers link inaccurate pronunciations to lexical entries (e.g., "spynitch" to "spinach"). Psychometric properties of the Mispronunciation Correction Task (MCT), a…

Poor comprehenders have intact word-reading skills but struggle specifically with understanding what they read. We investigated whether two metalinguistic skills, morphological and syntactic awareness, are specifically related to poor reading comprehension by including separate and combined measures of each. We identified poor comprehenders…

The present study examined the cognitive factors that influence children's physical science learning from a multimedia instruction. Using a causally coherent text and visual models, we taught 4th- and 7th-grade children about the observable and molecular properties of the three states of water. We manipulated whether the text was read by a tutor…

This study investigated some relationships between age, socioeconomic status (SES), and cognitive task performance among 120 Canadian children from Grades 1 and 4. Subjects were administered a battery of tasks, including Raven's Colored Progressive Matrices and Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, which differed in transformational requirements and…

A paired-comparisons measure of distributive justice development, the Distributive Justice Scale (DJS), was developed and validated in four studies. Pictures were drawn to represent the different stages of distributive justice for a given dilemma and the DJS was scored by selecting the child's preferred stage via the picture comparisons for each…