Research has documented various family and individual risk factors associated with severe conduct problems, but little is known about the developmental origins of children who engage in both aggressive and prosocial interactions with others. The present study utilized growth-mixture modeling to identify distinct trajectories of physical aggression…

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…

We assessed the simple view of reading as a framework for Grade 3 reading comprehension in two ways. We first confirmed that a structural equation model in which word recognition, listening comprehension, and reading comprehension were assessed by multiple measures to inform each latent construct provided an adequate fit to this model in Grade 3.…

Sentence repetition and non-word repetition tests are widely used measures of language processing which are sensitive to language ability. Surprisingly little previous work has investigated whether children's socio-economic status (SES) affects their sentence and non-word repetition accuracy. This study investigates sentence and non-word…

Despite poor vocabulary outcomes for children with hearing loss, few studies have evaluated the effectiveness of specific vocabulary teaching methods on vocabulary learning for this group. The authors compared three vocabulary instruction conditions with preschool children with hearing loss: (a) explicit, direct instruction; (b) follow-in…

Concurrent associations between teacher ratings of inattention, hyperactivity and pre-reading skills were examined in 64 pre-schoolers who had not commenced formal reading instruction and 136 school entrants who were in the first weeks of reading instruction. Both samples of children completed measures of pre-reading skills, namely phonological…

This mixed-method study examined the impact of an online formative assessment tool on the language and early literacy skills development of 204 3-4-year-old children enrolled in Head Start. Twenty-four classroom and children participated in a two-group randomized control trial, in which classrooms in the treatment condition implemented weekly…

Background: The elaborated environmental stress hypothesis (EESH) provides a framework that describes how motor skills may indirectly cause internalizing problems through various mediating psychosocial factors. While there is evidence to support this framework, little is known about how the proposed relationships may vary across different stages…

Background: A significant minority of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are considered "minimally verbal" due to language development stagnating at a few words. Recent developments allow for the severity of ASD symptoms to be examined using Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS) Social Affect (SA) and Restricted and…

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…

In the fall and spring semesters, the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test and the Test de Vocabulario en Imágenes was administered to a sample of pre-K students in Austin Independent School District. The following report provides Fall 2013 results for each vertical team of schools.

Acquisitionists generally assume a relation between code-mixing in young bilingual and trilingual children and language dominance. In our cross-sectional study we investigated the possible relation between code-mixing and language dominance in 122 children raised in Spain or Germany. They were bilingual, trilingual or multilingual, the latter…

This study examined Head Start's impact on fathers' school-based involvement and associations with Black children's cognitive, behavioral, and social-emotional skills. With a sample of 1,354 Black children, fathers' involvement was measured as attendance at school meetings, teacher conferences, school events, and/or volunteering at school events.…

We examined whether the early learning environment predicts children's 5th grade skills in 2,204 families from ethnically diverse, low-income backgrounds; tested the mediating roles of children's pre-kindergarten school-related skills and later learning environment; and asked whether lagged associations generalize across White, Black, Hispanic…

The authors explored predictions from basic emotion theory (BET) that facial emotion expression recognition skills are insular with respect to their own development, and yet foundational to the development of emotional perspective-taking skills. Participants included 417 preschool children for whom estimates of these 2 emotion understanding…