One of the aims for compulsory education is to diminish or alleviate differences in children's skills existing prior to school entry. However, a growing gender gap in reading development has increasingly been documented. Regrettably, there is scant evidence on whether differences between genders (favouring girls) have their roots in pre-reading…

Research Findings: The purpose of this study was to identify the developmental trajectories of impulsive behavior among 378 Finnish children who were followed from kindergarten to 4th grade. In addition to ratings of children's impulsivity, the analyses included measures of motivation, cognitive skills, socioemotional adjustment, and…

We examined the associations between 5-year-old children's private speech, behavioural self-regulation, and cognitive abilities. Behavioural self-regulation was assessed using parental and preschool teacher questionnaires. Cognitive abilities (i.e., language, inhibition, planning and fluency, and memory) were assessed with neurocognitive tests,…

Background: Analyses from the Jyvaskyla Longitudinal Study of Dyslexia project show that the key childhood predictors (phonological awareness, short-term memory, rapid naming, expressive vocabulary, pseudoword repetition, and letter naming) of dyslexia differentiate the group with reading disability (n = 46) and the group without reading problems…

Emerging phonological awareness was compared in two groups of 3.5-year-old children belonging to the Jyvaskyla Longitudinal Study of Dyslexia (JLD): children with familial risk of dyslexia (at-risk group n = 98) and children without such risk (control group n = 91). Four computer animated tasks were used: Word-level and Syllable-level Segment…