This study investigated whether transitory and persistent poverty spells were associated with children's learning (literacy and numeracy scores) and executive function outcomes in Ghana. Children resided in the Greater Accra region (N = 2,154; 49% female; M[subscript age] = 5.2 years at wave-1) and were followed at four-time points over three…

This study investigated whether transitory and persistent poverty spells were associated with children's learning (literacy and numeracy scores) and executive function outcomes in Ghana. Children resided in the Greater Accra region (N = 2,154; 49% female; M[subscript age] = 5.2 years at wave-1) and were followed at four-time points over three…

A large and growing body of work has documented robust illusions of area perception in adults. To date, however, there has been surprisingly little in-depth investigation into children's area perception, despite the importance of this topic to the study of quantity perception more broadly (and to the many studies that have been devoted to studying…

Little is known about the across time stability of autistic traits during the transition period from preschool to school age in the general population. The current study compared autistic traits assessed by a mother-reported quantitative measure, the Social Responsiveness Scale, at age 5 and 8 years and examined the intraclass correlation…

Many words are associated with more than a single meaning. Words are sometimes "ambiguous," applying to unrelated meanings, but the majority of frequent words are "polysemous" in that they apply to multiple "related" meanings. In a preregistered design that included 2 tasks, we tested adults' and 4.5- to 7-year-old…

The purpose of this study was to compare the sensory-processing patterns of preterm and term children at 6 years of age. The sensory profile (SP; W. Dunn, 1999) was used to evaluate sensory-processing patterns. We compared the section and factor SP scores of 118 preterm children with those of 158 term children at 6 years of age. Preterm children…

Individuals track probabilities, such as associations between events in their environments, but less is known about the degree to which experience--within a learning session and over development--influences people's use of incoming probabilistic information to guide behavior in real time. In two experiments, children (4-11 years) and adults…

Background: Phonological difficulties in children with developmental language disorder (DLD) are well documented. However, abilities regarding prosody, the rhythmic and melodic characteristics of language, have been less widely studied, particularly in Spanish. Moreover, the scant research findings that have been reported are contradictory. These…

Purpose: The aim of the study was to investigate the relationship between language load and articulatory variability in children with language and speech sound disorders, including childhood apraxia of speech. Method: Forty-six children, ages 48-92 months, participated in the current study, including children with speech sound disorder,…

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…

Autism spectrum disorder is the fastest growing developmental disability in the United States. As such, there is an unprecedented need for research examining factors contributing to the health disparities in this population. This research suggests a relationship between the levels of physical activity and health outcomes. In fact, excessive…

Children with specific language impairment (SLI) have difficulty engaging in social pretend play, which cannot be explained exclusively by their deficient language skills. Alternatively, the ability to represent mental states (Theory of Mind [ToM]) might be important in appreciating peers' perspectives during pretend play. This study investigated…

Purpose: Four measures of children's developing robustness of phonological contrast were compared to see how they correlated with age, vocabulary size, and adult listeners' correctness ratings. Method: Word-initial sibilant fricative productions from eighty-one 2- to 5-year-old children and 20 adults were phonetically transcribed and acoustically…

In this study, monolingual (English) and bilingual (English/Spanish, English/Urdu) five- and six-year-old children completed a grammaticality judgment test in order to assess their awareness of the grammaticality of two types of syntactic constructions in English: word order and gender representation. All children were better at detecting…

Classroom engagement is important to young children's academic and social development. Accurate methods of capturing this behavior are needed to inform and evaluate intervention efforts. This study compared the accuracy of interval durations (i.e., 5 s, 10 s, 15 s, 20 s, 30 s, and 60 s) of momentary time sampling (MTS) in approximating the…