The present study explored the home literacy environment for Chinese ESL kindergarteners and examined the relationships between home literacy practices and language and literacy skills. Ninety Hong Kong Chinese ESL kindergarteners were assessed for English vocabulary, phonological awareness, letter knowledge and word reading. Their parents…

Empirical examination of the Reynolds Intellectual Assessment Scales (RIAS; C. R. Reynolds & R. W. Kamphaus, 2003a) has produced mixed results regarding its internal structure and convergent validity. Various aspects of validity of RIAS scores with a sample (N = 521) of adolescents and adults seeking psychological evaluations at a university-based…

Young children typically do not use order-of-mention to resolve ambiguous pronouns, but may do so if given additional cues, such as gestures. Additionally, this ability to utilize gestures may be enhanced in bilingual children, who may be more sensitive to such cues due to their unique language experience. We asked monolingual and bilingual…

In autism spectrum disorders, results of cognitive testing inform clinical care, theories of neurodevelopment, and research design. The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children and the Stanford-Binet are commonly used in autism spectrum disorder evaluations and scores from these tests have been shown to be highly correlated in typically developing…

Variability in clinical expression and in intervention outcome has been described in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The study examined progress after 1 and 2 years of intervention and compared the impact of baseline cognitive ability on outcome trajectories in 46 children (m = 25.5 months) with ASD. The entire group showed a gradual decrease in…

An innovative DVD of classic nursery rhymes and stories empowered at-risk kindergarten children to control in the home when and how much they listen, promoting better listening, reading, and overall literacy comprehension skills. Coupled with modest teacher training, and limited use in the classroom, the DVD generated dramatic vocabulary growth in…

Does solving subtraction problems with negative answers (e.g., 5-14) require different cognitive processes than solving problems with positive answers (e.g., 14-5)? In a dual-task experiment, young adults (N=39) combined subtraction with two working memory tasks, verbal memory and visual-spatial memory. All of the subtraction problems required…

This study explored the effects of an evidence-based literacy program, ABRACADABRA, on the spelling abilities of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Twenty children with ASD aged 5-11 years were assigned to matched instruction and waitlist control groups. Children in the instruction group received 26 hrs of individualized, home-based…

This research addresses the challenges of assessing receptive language abilities in minimally verbal children with autism spectrum disorder by comparing several adapted measurement tools: a standardized direct assessment of receptive vocabulary (i.e. Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-4); caregiver report measures including scores on the Vineland-II…

Background: Although a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) appears to be stable in children as young as age three, few studies have explored stability of a diagnosis in younger children. Predictive value of diagnostic tools for toddlers and patterns of symptom change are important considerations for clinicians making early diagnoses. Most…

Aim: The aim of this article was to explore the effect of duration of breastfeeding on neurocognitive development. Method: The long-term effect of breastfeeding on neurodevelopment was examined through a battery of neuropsychological tests in 1403 children (693 females, 710 males; mean age 11y 9mo [SD 6mo], range: 10y 3mo-12y 8mo) who were…

This study examines whether children with specific language impairment (SLI) acquiring a language with a rich case marking system (Hungarian) have difficulty with case, and, if so, whether the difficulty is comparable for spatial and nonspatial meanings. Data were drawn from narrative samples and from a sentence repetition task. Suffixes were…

The identification of gifted children is an interactive procedure consisting of two consecutive steps--screening for above-average cognitive abilities, followed by their monitoring. Teacher nomination is among the most widely used methods of screening. However, it is not free from bias. The analysis of screening criteria is of prime importance for…

This study investigated whether Korean children understand the internal structure of compound words in Korean and English and whether there is a relationship between their performance in tasks that measure their understanding of the morphological structure of compounds in Korean and English. This study also examined the effects of gender, grade,…

This study uncovers which learning (epistemic belief of learning), socioeconomic background (level of parental education, family income) or social-personality factors (performance-avoidance goals, test anxiety) mitigate the ethnic gap in SAT (Scholastic Assessment Test) scores. Measures assessing achievement motivation, test anxiety, socioeconomic…