Theoretical work has suggested close associations between morphological awareness (MA) and reading skills in Chinese; however, the nature and direction of these time-ordered links are little known. This study examined the interplays of MA and reading skills using a continuous-time modeling approach to three waves of two-year longitudinal data from…

This study examines associations between leisure reading and reading skills in data of 2,525 students followed from age 7 to 16. As a step further from traditional cross-lagged analysis, a random intercept cross-lagged panel model was used to identify within-person associations of leisure reading (books, magazines, newspapers, and digital…

This study explores the co-development of two related but separate reading skills, reading fluency and reading comprehension, across Grades 1-4. A bivariate biometric dual change score model was applied to longitudinal data collected from 1,784 twin pairs between the ages of 6 and 10 years. Grade 1 skills were influenced by highly overlapping…

Mothers' mental-state references predict individual differences in preschoolers' false-belief (FB) understanding; less is known about the origins of corresponding variation in school-age children. To address this gap, 105 children completed observations with their mothers at child ages 2 and 6, three FB tasks and a verbal comprehension…

Eye movements were recorded while sixty-two 1-year-olds, 4-year-olds, and adults watched television. Of interest was the extent to which viewers looked at the same place at the same time as their peers because high similarity across viewers suggests systematic viewing driven by comprehension processes. Similarity of gaze location increased with…

Two comprehension experiments were conducted to investigate whether young French-learning children (N = 76) are able to use a single number cue in subject-verb agreement contexts and match a visually dynamic scene with a corresponding verbal stimulus. Results from both preferential looking and pointing demonstrated significant comprehension in…

Two comprehension experiments were conducted to investigate whether German children are able to use the grammatical cues of word order and word endings (case markers) to identify agents and patients in a causative sentence and whether they weigh these two cues differently across development. Two-year-olds correctly understood only sentences with…

Changes in visual attention and story comprehension for children (N = 132) with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and comparison peers were examined. Between the ages of 7 and 9 (Phase 1) and approximately 21 months later (Phase 2), children viewed 2 televised stories: 1 in the presence of toys and 1 in their absence. Both groups of…

This research was designed to examine the quality of children's aesthetic understanding of photographs, observe social interactions between parents and children in this aesthetic domain, and study whether qualitatively different dyadic interactions were associated with children's own aesthetic understanding. Parents and children (7-13 years; 40…

Three experiments investigated (1) whether developmental differences in the information integration rule apply to ulterior motive information; (2) whether such developmental differences are limited to situations involving parental reward; and (3) how related age differences among children can best be explained. (RH)

Children in grades 1, 3, and 5 were asked to decide whether selected contradictory sentences were true or false. The age at which children were first able to evaluate the false sentences correctly corresponded to the relative speed with which adults evaluated the sentences in a timed vertification task. (Author/JMB)

Investigated were developmental and individual differences in children's ability to make inferences from prose. Children in grades two and six read several three-sentence paragraphs containing two premise sentences, from which inferences followed directly, and one filler sentence unrelated to the inferences. They then answered questions about…

Infants of 14 months of age demonstrated significantly improved understanding of containment as a result of a training intervention in which they played with cans and tubes in their homes for a month. After training, their test scores were similar to those of untrained 20-month-old children. (RH)

Examined the distinction between preschool children's incorrect and opposite interpretations of "less" and investigated the influence of contextual/procedural factors on their comprehension of "less." (Author/JMB)

The ability of 7-, 8-, and 9-year-olds to understand proverbs was examined by having subjects compare each proverb against two thematic pictures: a nonliteral correct interpretation of the proverb and a foil. The results, which contradict the literature, showed consistent above-chance performance across subjects, ages, and proverbs. (Author/JMB)