Emotion regulation is foundational to children's psychological wellbeing and future school adjustment. As young children are spending increasing amounts of time in preschool programs, investigating how early childhood classrooms can foster emotion regulation development is warranted. In this study, we tested individual children's interactions with…

Pre-kindergarten (Pre-K) programs typically improve early academic skills, but those gains too often disappear after children transition to elementary school. At least three hypotheses explain this "fade-out" of Pre-K effects: Pre-K does not focus on the "trifecta skills" that uniquely support subsequent learning and…

As state-funded pre-kindergarten (pre-K) programs expand, it is critical to investigate their short- and long-term effects. This article presents the results through sixth grade of a longitudinal randomized control study of the effects of a scaled-up, state-supported pre-K program. The analytic sample includes 2,990 children from low-income…

Several models of working memory (WM) have been proposed in the literature. Most of the research on the architecture of WM is based on adults or older children, but less is known about younger children. In this study, we tested various models of WM on a sample of 739 Italian children, ranging in age from 3 to 8 years, primarily of European…

The sustaining environments hypothesis theorizes that the lasting effects of PreK programs are contingent on the quality of the subsequent learning environment in early elementary school. The current study tests this theory by leveraging data from students (N = 462) who did and did not enroll in the Boston Public Schools (BPS) prekindergarten…

Children's early environmental experiences are often considered highly influential for later life development. Yet, environmental contexts, such as the home and early care and education (ECE) setting, and multiple aspects of each setting, are not typically examined concurrently. In this study, we examined associations between cognitive stimulation…

Decades of research suggest that both Head Start and public pre-kindergarten (pre-k) programs boost low-income preschoolers' kindergarten skills. What is not yet well understood is whether there are relative advantages of transitioning from Head Start after 1 year into a school-based public pre-k program for the year immediately before…

In the present study, we investigated the relative impact of age- versus schooling-related growth in school readiness skills using four modeling approaches that leverage natural variation in longitudinal data collected within the preschool year. Our goal was to demonstrate the applicability of different analytic techniques that do not rely on…

The interrelationships between math and behavioral skill development prior to school entry are not well understood, yet have important implications for understanding how to best prepare young children for kindergarten. This study addresses this gap by utilizing a sample of 1,750 children (53% male; 47% White, 16% Black, 16% Hispanic, 8% Asian, and…

Efforts to increase moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) in school-age children are associated with improved health, cognitive, and academic outcomes. However, questions remain about whether similar benefits are observed in early childhood. We hypothesized that motor competence, not MVPA, would be related to improved cognitive and…

The present study examined longitudinal associations between behavioral self-regulation and social-emotional functioning across four waves of measurement during the transition from preschool to kindergarten in a low-income sample. Participants included two cohorts of children (N = 558; 51% male). Children in both cohorts were 4 years old (Cohort…

The relation between nonword repetition and vocabulary has been the focus of a theoretical controversy for several decades. The point of contention is whether the ability underlying nonword repetition drives vocabulary growth or vice versa. The present study examines longitudinal interrelations between nonword repetition and vocabulary from age 3…

The Midwest Child-Parent Center (CPC) Expansion began preschool implementation in fall 2012 in 5 Minnesota and Illinois districts. This study reports preschool and kindergarten impact findings for the Saint Paul Public School District. It is the first impact study of CPC outside of Chicago. After documenting that implementation quality was…

Governments around the world are increasing investments in early childhood education as a way to promote children's learning and development. As research grows on the longer-term effects of early educational programs, some have hypothesized that sustained impacts may depend on the quality of children's subsequent classroom environments and may be…

Children start preschool with large individual differences in their early numerical abilities. Little is known about the importance of heterogeneous patterns that exist within these individual differences. A person-centered analytic approach might be helpful to unravel these patterns and the cognitive and environmental factors that are associated…