The current study examines the extent to which associations between internalizing problems, body mass index (BMI), and language skills from early (36 months) to late childhood (fifth grade) are due to relatively stable between-child differences, time-specific correlations, or cross-lagged paths. Data from the NICHD study, Early Child Care and…

Family and educational institutions play a decisive role in learning and strengthening habits related to physical activity and health. School has a specific mission in this scope, especially at the first stage of education. Attempting to answer the question of how schools in practice realise these tasks, a study was conducted on the level of…

The purpose of the current study was to examine whether morphological awareness measured before children are taught to read (Kindergarten in Israel) predicts reading accuracy and fluency in the middle of first grade, at the very beginning of the process of learning to read pointed Hebrew -- a highly transparent orthography, and whether this…

A pretest-training-posttest design assessed whether training to improve spatial skills also improved mathematics performance in elementary-aged children. First grade students (mean age = 7 years, n = 134) and sixth grade students (mean age = 12 years, n = 124) completed training in 1 of 2 spatial skills-spatial visualization or form…

Purpose: We employed a time-gated word recognition task to investigate how children who are hard of hearing (CHH) and children with normal hearing (CNH) combine cognitive-linguistic abilities and acoustic--phonetic cues to recognize words in sentence-final position. Method: The current study included 40 CHH and 30 CNH in 1st or 3rd grade.…

Spatial reasoning, recognised as playing a critical role across STEM disciplines, is gaining prominence in mathematics education, not only as fundamental to mathematics, but also as embodied mathematical activity. In this paper, we discuss spatial reasoning and its embodiment in mathematics. We then present a systematic review of the topics as…

Purpose: Identifying appropriate targets for vocabulary instruction and determining the optimal sequence for instruction continue to be a challenge. The purpose of this study is to investigate how previously studied lexical characteristics collectively influence children's word learning. Method: A secondary data analysis was conducted using the…

Using an unanticipated policy reform in Mexico that shifted 4 months the cutoff date for elementary school eligibility in 2006 and information on academic performance of 15-year-old students from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2018 survey, who entered first grade in 2006, this paper estimates the effects of starting…

Math anxiety negatively predicts young children's math achievement. While some researchers have suggested that math anxiety may stem from poor math ability, others have argued that math anxiety occurs at all levels of math ability. An important question is whether math anxiety predicts math achievement over and above foundational math skills. We…

Consistent over-enrollment, together with low official repetition rates, in the early years of school indicates inaccurate reporting of repetition, which may mask the reasons for low primary school completion. Actual repetition rates may be higher and pose issues for teachers through overcrowding of classrooms and issues for governments through…

Purpose: Identifying appropriate targets for vocabulary instruction and determining the optimal sequence for instruction continue to be a challenge. The purpose of this study is to investigate how previously studied lexical characteristics collectively influence children's word learning. Method: A secondary data analysis was conducted using the…

To understand mathematics, children must interpret mathematics symbols. In this study, we designed a brief assessment of mathematics symbols for children in the elementary grades. For each of 23 symbols, children identified the symbol, provided the meaning of the symbol, and used the symbol. We assessed 297 children in Grades 1, 3, and 5. Internal…

Schooling may shape children's abilities to control their attention, but it is unclear if this impact extends from control over visual objects to encompass multisensory objects, which are more typical of everyday environments. We compared children across three primary school grades (Swiss first, third, and fifth grades) on their performance on a…

Peer nominations and teacher ratings were used to examine age and sex differences in behaviors associated with perceived coolness during middle childhood. Participants were 470 students in Grades 1, 3, and 5. Participants nominated peers whom they perceived as cool; separate scores were calculated for samesex coolness and cross-sex coolness (i.e.,…

Literature has indicated conflicting results regarding the relationship between grasp patterns and legible handwriting. Historically, the dynamic tripod grasp was viewed as the gold standard, but more recent literature indicates that grasp may not have as much of an effect on handwriting legibility as once thought. The purpose of this study is to…