Why is instructional gesture ineffective in some contexts? And what is it about learners that predicts whether they will learn from gestures? This between-subjects linear measurement training study compares gesture instruction to two controls--operant action and transient action--in a diverse sample of first-grade students (N = 174, M[subscript…

We examined the dimensionality of oral discourse skills (comprehension and retell of texts) and the relations of language and cognitive skills to the identified dimensions. Data were from 529 English-speaking second graders (M[subscript age] = 7.42; 46% female; 52.6% Whites, 33.8% African Americans, 4.9% Hispanics, 4.7% two or more races, 0.8%…

This 5-year longitudinal study examined whether high mathematics achievers in primary school had cognitive advantages before entering formal education. High mathematics achievement was defined as performing above Pc 90 in Grades 1 and 3. The predominantly White sample (M[subscript age] in preschool: 64 months) included 31 high achievers (12 girls)…

Guided by the Theory of Racial Socialization in Action (TRSA; Smith-Bynum in press), this study examined observed caregiver-provided ethnic-racial socialization in response to a school-based discriminatory dilemma. Forty-five Black and 36 Latinx caregivers (88% mothers) with low-income and their children (M[subscript age] = 11.09, SD = 0.29; 46.3%…

Understanding how early reading and mathematics co-develop is important from both theoretical and pedagogical standpoints. Previous research has provided mixed results. This paper investigates the development of reading and mathematics in a longitudinal sample of N = 355,883 students from the United Kingdom (2005-2019) aged 5 to 12 (49% girls).…

Children are on a quest for knowledge. To achieve it, children must integrate separate but related episodes of learning. The theoretical model of memory integration posits that the process is supported by component cognitive abilities. In turn, memory integration predicts accumulation of a knowledge base. We tested this model in two studies (data…

Parents' judgment of their children's cognitive ability is important for providing adequate learning environments. This study examined parents' judgment accuracy with 2346 children (M = 8.94 years; 48.3% girls) and their parents (1283 mothers, 426 fathers, and 637 parental pairs). The data were collected between September 2012 and February 2014 in…

Developmental studies examining relations between word reading (WR) and decoding in typical and dyslexic populations routinely cut the reading distribution to form distinct groups. However, dichotomizing continuous variables to study development is problematic for multiple reasons. Instead, we modeled and visualized the parallel growth of WR and…

This 6-wave longitudinal study (2014-2018) of 161 German 5- to 10-year-olds from a midsized city and rural area in southern Germany (89 females, 72 males; predominantly White; mostly middle class) found that scientific-reasoning abilities first develop at 6 years. Abilities were highly stable, with the kindergarten score predicting 25% of…

Correlational studies link spatial-test scores and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics achievement. Here we asked whether children's understanding of astronomical phenomena would benefit from a prior intervention targeting a core component of children's projective spatial concepts--understanding that viewers' visual experiences are…

The academic achievement places children on a positive trajectory for their lifespan. The aim of this study was to examine the academic trajectories of children in out-of-home care (OOCH) and whether kinship care has a protective effect relative to nonkin foster care. The sample analyzed for this study consists of 519,306 racially diverse youth in…

Reading disability (RD) may be characterized by reduced print-speech convergence, which is the extent to which neurocognitive processes for reading and hearing words overlap. We examined how print-speech convergence changes from children (mean age: 11.07±0.48) to adults (mean age: 21.33±1.80) in 86 readers with or without RD. The participants were…

Recent studies established that making concurrent judgments of learning (JOLs) can significantly alter (typically enhance) memory itself--a "reactivity" effect. The current study recruited 190 Chinese children (M[subscript age] = 8.68 years; 101 female) in 2020 and 2021 to explore the reactivity effect on children's learning, its…

Dimensional comparisons (i.e., comparing own performances across domains) may drive an increasing differentiation in students' math and verbal self-concepts over time, but little longitudinal research has directly tested this assumption. Using cross-sequential data spanning Grades 1-12 (N = 1069, ages 6-18, 92% White, 2% Black, 51% female,…

This study investigates the dynamic interplay between bullying relationships and friendships in a sample of 481 students in 19 elementary school classrooms (age 8-12 years; 50% boys). Based on a relational framework, it is to be expected that friendships would be formed when two children bullied the same person and that children would start to…