Caregivers play an outsized role in shaping early life experiences and development, but we often lack mechanistic insight into "how" exactly caregiver behavior scaffolds the neurodevelopment of specific learning processes. Here, we capitalized on the fact that caregivers differ in how predictable their behavior is to ask if infants'…

Humans are capable of extracting recurring patterns from their environment via statistical learning (SL), an ability thought to play an important role in language learning and learning more generally. While much work has examined statistical learning in infants and adults, less work has looked at the developmental trajectory of SL during childhood…

The present study examined whether temporal processing (TP) is associated with reading of a non-alphabetic script, that is, Chinese. A total of 126 primary school-aged Chinese children from Taiwan (63 children with dyslexia) completed cross-modal, visual, and auditory temporal order judgment tasks and measures of Chinese reading and…

Concepts of containment, support, and degree of fit were investigated using nonverbal, preferential-looking tasks with 9- to 14-month-old infants and adults who were fluent in either English or Korean. Two contrasts were tested: tight containment vs. loose support (grammaticized as "in" and "on" in English by spatial prepositions and "kkita" and…

Examines the relationship between perceptual modality measured by the Swassing-Barbe Modality Index (SBMI) to musical aptitude measured by Primary Measures of Music Audiation (PMMA) in kindergarten students. Reports correlations between the measures that support findings at other grade levels. Supports the theory that perceptual modalities become…

Explores the link among music content and teaching style and the changes in children's ratings of musical self-competence and their motivation to continue in music. Tested 100 Portuguese children over three years. Finds that declines in both motivation and evaluation of self-competence may be explained by excessive emphasis on aural skills and…

Maintains that learning to read must take advantage of the child's natural playful tendencies. Shows how stories in widely-used school primers make use of trick themes based on puns, figures of speech, or metaphors. Concludes that such stories should be used to reinforce the relationship between reading and natural language. (JDH)

This paper discusses the development and implementation of a model to identify developmental immaturities in kindergarten children preparing to enter first grade and to write remedial educational prescriptions designed to correct these immaturities. Kindergarten and first-grade teachers, as well as special services personnel and principals, were…