Performance measures, including standardized test scores or cognitive tasks, are commonly conceptualized as stable measures, yet are often unreliable indices of skill. We examine two contextual factors, performance pressure and feedback, that may influence the extent to which individuals demonstrate their cognitive capacity by manipulating…

In order to make appropriate educational recommendations, psychologists must understand how cognitive test scores influence specific academic outcomes for students of different ability levels. We used data from the WISC-V and WIAT-III (N = 181) to examine which WISC-V Index scores predicted children's specific and broad academic skills and if…

Much recent research has focused on the relation between spatial skills and mathematical skills, which has resulted in widely reported links between these two skill sets. However, the magnitude of this relation is unclear. Furthermore, it is of interest whether this relation differs in size based on key demographic variables, such as gender and…

Field independence describes the extent to which individuals are influenced by context when trying to identify embedded targets. It associates with cognitive functioning and is a predictor of academic achievement. However, little is known about the neural and cognitive underpinnings of field independence that lead to these associations. Here, we…

The present study evaluated: (1) the effects of two training programs designed for promoting Theory of Mind (ToM) skills in children aged 7/8; and (2) the relations between second-order recursive thinking (II-order-RT), advanced-ToM (Adv_ToM) and metacognition. Ninety-one 7- to 8-year-old children were assigned to one of three training conditions:…

An enduring challenge in visual-spatial research has been to identify the factors contributing to individual differences in ability. This research investigated the overall, verbal, and nonverbal visual-spatial ability of 61 (34 boys) three- to five-year-olds (M[subscript age] = 57.3 months; SD = 7.9) and the following factors known to be related…

Formal thought disorder (FTD) is a disruption in the flow of thought and a common feature in psychotic disorders and autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Executive dysfunction has often been associated with FTD, yet for ASD convincing evidence is lacking. This study investigated FTD and three core executive functions in 50 young children and…

Purpose: The aim of this study was to compare the verbal and nonverbal cognitive profiles of children with specific language impairment (SLI) with problems predominantly in expressive (SLI-E) or receptive (SLI-R) language skills. These diagnostic subgroups have not been compared before in psychological studies. Method: Participants were…

This study investigates whether age-related changes in the structure of 5 complex working memory (WM) tasks (a) reflect a general or domain specific system, (b) follows a similar trajectory across different age spans, and (c) contribute domain general or domain specific resources to achievement measures. The study parsed the sample (N = 2,471)…

Intellectual abilities are consistently found to be associated to child functioning. To date, however, it is unclear how varying intellectual profiles relate to differential aspects of child functioning. We screened 513 fifth-grade children on their intellectual abilities and selected three groups of gifted children, scoring in the top 10%:…

This study rank ordered the contributive importance of several predictors of listening comprehension for third, seventh, and tenth graders. Principal components analyses revealed that a three-factor solution with fluency, reasoning, and working memory components provided the best fit across grade levels. Dominance analyses indicated that fluency…

This study demonstrates the utility of applying a causal indicator modeling framework to investigate important predictors of reading comprehension in third, seventh, and tenth grade students. The results indicated that a 4-factor multiple indicator multiple indicator cause (MIMIC) model of reading comprehension provided adequate fit at each grade…

Working memory and inductive reasoning ability each appear related to children's achievement in math and reading. Dynamic measures of reasoning, based on an assessment procedure including feedback, may provide additional predictive value. The aim of this study was to investigate whether working memory and dynamic measures of analogical…

New findings are presented for children in Grades 1 to 9 who qualified their families for a multigenerational family genetics study of dyslexia (impaired word decoding/spelling) who had either superior verbal reasoning ("n" = 33 at or above 1 2/3 standard deviation, superior or better range; 19% of these children) or average verbal…

The mental lexicon plays a central role in reading comprehension (Perfetti & Stafura, 2014). It encompasses the number of lexical entries in spoken and written language (vocabulary breadth), the semantic quality of these entries (vocabulary depth), and the connection strength between lexical representations (semantic relatedness); as such, it…