Habituation and dishabituation are the most prevalent measures of infant cognitive functioning, and they have reliably been shown to predict later cognitive outcomes. Yet, the exact mechanisms underlying infant habituation and dishabituation are still unclear. To investigate them, we tested 106 8-month-old infants on a classic habituation task and…

The goal of this study was to examine the post-treatment development of word and pseudoword accuracy and fluency and its cognitive and linguistic predictors in Dutch children with dyslexia compared with typical readers in the upper primary grades. Word and pseudoword reading accuracy and fluency were assessed at the start and end of grade 5 and at…

Visual attention span (VAS) predicts reading performance over and above phonological skills. Given the growing number of studies that include VAS, it is surprising that indications of the stability of VAS performance and its relation with reading over time have not yet been reported. The current study addressed these important issues. Participants…

Cognitive processes underlying a behavioural outcome (like reading ability) and the impact of familial risk (e.g., for dyslexia) have been studied in isolation. We present a novel design, linking the two avenues. How do familial influences impact on children's cognitive skills, which subsequently underlie reading development? Participants from the…

High and stable levels of aggression and the presence of aggressive behaviour in multiple settings according to different informants are risk factors for later problems. However, these two factors have not been investigated in early childhood. The present study investigates trajectories of parent-reported child aggression from 1.5 up to 6 years of…

Beginning readers' reading latencies increase as words become longer. This length effect is believed to be a marker of a serial reading process. We examined the effects of visual and phonological skills on the length effect. Participants were 184 second-grade children who read 3- to 5-letter words and nonwords. Results indicated that reading…

Many children with specific language impairment (SLI) show impairments in discriminating auditorily presented stimuli. The present study investigates whether these discrimination problems are speech specific or of a general auditory nature. This was studied using a linguistic and nonlinguistic contrast that were matched for acoustic complexity in…

Background: Gifted children learn differently compared to their peers in several ways. However, their educational needs are often not met in regular schools, which may result in underachievement and social-emotional and behavioral problems. A pullout program, the "Day a Week School" (DWS), was offered to gifted children in 25 elementary…

A study that investigated the relationships between exposure to lead and memory and attention in 313 boys (ages 9-12) in special-education schools in the Netherlands found blood-lead levels were higher in children with lower socioeconomic status and those with more hand-to-mouth behavior but did not influence cognitive factors. (Author/CR)

This study examined the utility of the Planning, Attention, Simultaneous, Successive (PASS) theory of intelligence as measured by the "Cognitive Assessment System" (CAS) for evaluation of children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The CAS scores of 51 Dutch children without ADHD were compared to the scores of a group…

Part of a series of investigations undertaken at the University of Leiden by Dr. G. A. Kohnstamm to investigate how children process information from audiovisual media, particularly television, this literature review maps out the educational possibilities of television for children up to the age of 12. Research findings reviewed are concerned…