During preschool age, three precursors to self-regulated learning (SRL) can be identified: general self-regulation ability, speech competence, and executive functioning. There is evidence for a large interindividual heterogeneity in these precursors which may have an impact on the development of SRL. This study (a) examined heterogeneity in SRL…

Children in early childhood education and care (ECEC) spend a considerable amount of time interacting with their peers. However, open questions remain on whether and how children influence their peers' language development. The present study examined effects of peers' German receptive vocabulary (n = 1,871) on individual children's (n = 431)…

In individuals with Down syndrome (DS) deficits in verbal short-term memory (VSTM) and deficits in sentence comprehension co-occur, suggesting that deficits in VSTM might be causal for the deficits in sentence comprehension. The present study aims to explore the presumed relationship between VSTM and sentence comprehension in individuals with DS…

Can early childhood education (ECE) support the societal language development of children from linguistically diverse backgrounds? This study examined how existing variation in classroom interaction quality (CLASS Pre-K), classroom composition (percentages of children from low-income backgrounds and dual language learners [DLLs]), and duration of…

National and international large-scale assessments (LSA) have a major impact on educational systems, which raises fundamental questions about the validity of the measures regarding their internal structure and their relations to relevant covariates. Given its importance, research on the validity of instruments specifically developed for LSA is…

Theory of mind is one of the most important cognitive factors in social information-processing, and deficits in theory of mind have been linked to aggressive behavior in childhood. The present longitudinal study investigated reciprocal links between theory of mind and two forms of aggression--physical and relational--in middle childhood with three…

This study aimed to address two underexplored research questions regarding support for the separation between competence and affect self-perceptions due to differential relations to outcome criteria. First, it is tested whether higher relations between affect self-perceptions and effort than between competence self-perceptions and effort can also…

Acquisitionists generally assume a relation between code-mixing in young bilingual and trilingual children and language dominance. In our cross-sectional study we investigated the possible relation between code-mixing and language dominance in 122 children raised in Spain or Germany. They were bilingual, trilingual or multilingual, the latter…

Background: Boys earn lower grades in languages than girls. The expectancy-value model by Eccles" et al." (1983, "A series of books in psychology. Achievement and achievement motives. Psychological and sociological approaches," W.H. Freeman, San Francisco, CA, 76) is a comprehensive theoretical model for explaining gender…

This study investigated teacher and parent ratings of teacher-nominated gifted elementary school students' verbal abilities, mathematical abilities, deductive reasoning, creative thinking, and engagement, and connected these ratings to school grades. Teacher and parent ratings were compared with regard to accuracy levels and halo effects.…

Shared-book reading is a well-established intervention to foster vocabulary development. Factors influencing its effectiveness are, however, less well studied, particularly with regard to story-delivery. We contrasted a read-aloud with a free storytelling approach and tested effects on vocabulary learning. In the first study, 83 preschoolers aged…

Theories and research in embodied cognition postulate that cognition grounded in action enjoys a processing advantage. Extending this theory to the study of how fine motor skills (FMS) link to vocabulary development in preschool children, the authors investigated FMS and vocabulary in 76 preschoolers. Building on previous research, they…

Research Findings: This study investigated the long-term interrelations among children's language competencies, their home literacy environment (HLE), and 3 aspects of socioemotional development from ages 3 to 8, controlling for characteristics of the child and family. For this sample of 547 typically developing German children, parents and…

Although the simple view of reading and other theories suggest that listening comprehension is an important determinant of reading comprehension, previous research on linguistic transfer has mainly focused on the role of first language (L1) decoding skills in second language (L2) reading. The present study tested the assumption that listening…

This study investigated the longitudinal relation between children's theory of mind and their metacognitive knowledge with a special focus on the impact of language on this relation. Measures of theory-of-mind understanding and metamemory knowledge were assessed in 133 3-year-old children at 4 measurement points separated by half-year intervals.…