Oral retelling portrays what one understands from reading or listening to a text. The retold stories of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often show macrostructural (overall story structure) difficulties. The study's purpose was to compare macrostructure oral story retelling, after reading (visual modality) or listening (auditory…

Spatial language and ability play important roles in children's cognitive development. Spatial ability in kindergarten predicts achievement in reading, math, science, and technology in primary school and therefore constitutes an important skill set in preparation for school entrance. Good spatial thinking skills are required for learning in…

This study challenges an existing controversy, whether there are innate differences in competitiveness between boys and girls in general, and among the gifted in particular, or whether competitiveness is context-sensitive. The specific context examined in the study is that of two pullout weekly enrichment gifted programs: one with single-sex…

Children with specific learning disabilities (SLD) exhibit specific difficulties in high-order components of emotional understanding that involve language (e.g., recognition of complex emotions from situations), or defining emotions and providing examples. The objectives of the current study were to study (a) modifiability of emotional…

Listening comprehension (LC) is considered an important but complex skill that predicts later reading comprehension in various languages. In this study, we aimed at understanding the relationship of LC with different linguistic and cognitive components. For this purpose, 262 Arabic-speaking kindergartners participated in this study. Our regression…

The Jewish ultra-orthodox (Haredi) Talmud Torah schools have been consistently resistant to the process of standardization in content, measurement, and evaluation, in contrast to the Israeli state education system which has progressed steadily in these areas. Talmud Torah schools are private elementary schools for ultra-orthodox boys. Studies are…

The objectives of this study were to examine (a) differences in figurative language, analogical reasoning, executive functions (EF), theory of mind (ToM), and local/ central coherence (LCC) of children with high-functioning autism (HFA; n 32) and typically developing (TD; n 32) children; (b) improvement of figurative language using dynamic…

The present study examined the role of language capacities in explaining differences in social information processing (SIP) among three school-age groups: high-functioning children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD, IQ > 75), children with specific learning disorder (SLD), and children with typical development (TD). Participants were 96 boys…

In order to reach gender equity in the gifted population, an affirmative action policy was instituted in Israel to increase the number of girls identified as gifted. The purpose of this study was to compare the self-efficacy beliefs of girls in the top 1.5% (gifted girls (GG)) with those of girls in the top 3% (GG in affirmative action). It was…

A large linguistic distance exists between spoken Arabic and the Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) the literary language (a diglosia). Novice readers, therefore, struggle with the complex orthography of Arabic as well as the mastering of MSA. Here, we tested whether structured activities in MSA would advance kindergarteners' MSA aptitude by the end of…

The study explored the nature of mother-child conversation during and after a shared book reading (SBR) interaction and how it relates to children's social understanding and prosocial behavior. Participants were 61 mother-child dyads (children's mean age 5 years, 8 months) from low socioeconomic strata (SES). Mother-child SBR and their…

We examined reading proficiency, focusing on fluency, in 56 Russian-speaking language minority (LM) students and 56 native Hebrew-speaking (NH) peers. Fifth-grade students completed measures of Hebrew reading accuracy and fluency from word to text level as well as phonological awareness (PA), RAN and vocabulary. LM students read single words less…

This article investigates the contribution of maternal mediation in storybook reading, socioeconomic status (SES), and home literacy environment (HLE) to children's literacy level in kindergarten and first grade in Israeli Arabic-speaking families. A total of 109 kindergarten children and their mothers participated. Children's literacy level was…

The impact of music activity on children's motor and cognitive skills has been investigated with music learning, instrument lessons and classroom music. While none have employed natural utterances, singing games or playground/street songs, these musical experiences of childhood are acknowledged as a major platform for child development. The…