Purpose: The aim of this study was to explore when and how Mandarin-speaking children use contextual cues to normalize speech variability in perceiving lexical tones. Two different cognitive mechanisms underlying speech normalization (lower level acoustic normalization and higher level acoustic-phonemic normalization) were investigated through the…

The aim of the present study was to test environmental and cognitive variables as possible cross-domain predictors of early literacy and numeracy skills. One hundred forty-eight preschool children (mean age = 64.36 months ± 3.33) were enrolled in the study. The battery included a home literacy and home numeracy questionnaire, measures and…

Purpose: It is well recognized that adding the visual to the acoustic speech signal improves recognition when the acoustic signal is degraded, but how that visual signal affects postrecognition processes is not so well understood. This study was designed to further elucidate the relationships among auditory and visual codes in working memory, a…

Introduction: Excessive alcohol consumption is the most widespread toxic habit in the world, and a particular problem among young people for whom alcohol is part of their recreational habits. The start of university studies coincides with adulthood when alcohol becomes easily available and used as a tool to deal with new stressors. It has been…

While little is known about why children make speech errors, it has been hypothesized that cognitive-linguistic factors may underlie phonological speech sound disorders. This study compared the phonological short-term and phonological working memory abilities (using immediate memory tasks) and receptive vocabulary size of 14 monolingual preschool…

A large linguistic distance exists between spoken Arabic and the Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) the literary language (a diglosia). Novice readers, therefore, struggle with the complex orthography of Arabic as well as the mastering of MSA. Here, we tested whether structured activities in MSA would advance kindergarteners' MSA aptitude by the end of…

Background: Deficits in time perception (the ability to judge the duration of time intervals) have been found in children with both attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and dyslexia. This paper investigates time perception, phonological skills and executive functions in children with dyslexia and/or ADHD symptoms (AS). Method: Children…

This study considered how far nonverbal cognitive, language and reading abilities are affected by common genetic influences in a sample of 312 typically developing Chinese twin pairs aged from 3 to 11 years. Children were individually given tasks of Chinese word reading, receptive vocabulary, phonological memory, tone awareness, syllable and rhyme…

This study tested the phonological core deficit hypothesis among Dutch dyslexic adults and also evaluated the pattern of individual differences among dyslexics predicted by the phonological-core variable-orthographic differences (PCVOD) model (van der Leij & Morfidi, 2006) in a sample of 57 control adults and 56 dyslexic adults. It was…

This study explored the contribution of the phonological and executive working memory (WM) systems to 205 (102 girls, 103 boys, 6 to 9 years old) elementary school children's fluid and crystallized intelligence. The results show that (a) a 3-factor structure (phonological short-term memory [STM], visual-spatial WM, and verbal WM) was comparable…

A range of possible predictors of arithmetic and reading were assessed in a large sample (N=162) of children between ages 7 years 5 months and 10 years 4 months. A confirmatory factor analysis of the predictors revealed a good fit to a model consisting of four latent variables (verbal ability, nonverbal ability, search speed, and phonological…

Comparison of eight-year-old children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) (n=21), learning disorder (LD) (n=12), or both (n=27) on neuropsychological measures found that ADHD children were impaired in control and inhibition of impulses; children with LD in phonological awareness, verbal memory span, storytelling, and verbal IQ;…