Purpose: Using a longitudinal design, this study aimed to describe inferential comprehension abilities of neglected French-speaking preschool children from 42 to 66 months of age in comparison to non-neglected peers, to examine the association with receptive vocabulary, and to determine whether rates of change in inferential abilities over time…

In contrast to research that examines the effects of socioeconomic status (SES) and bilingualism on development by comparing clearly disparate groups, the present study investigated the role of subtle differences in these experiences for their joint impact on performance on a verbal fluency task and an executive function (EF) task. The study…

What is the foundational knowledge that children rely on to provide meaning as they construct an exact symbolic number system? People and animals can quickly and accurately distinguish small exact quantities (i.e., 1 to 3). One possibility is that children's ability to map small quantities to spoken number words supports their developing exact…

Intellectual impairments in preschoolers have been widely studied. A regularity that emerges is that children's intellectual impairments have an important impact on later adjustments in life. However, few studies have looked at the intellectual profiles of young psychiatric outpatients. This study aimed to describe the intelligence profile of…

There is an ongoing need for literature that identifies the effects of broad contextual risk on school readiness outcomes via family mediating mechanisms. This is especially true amongst diverse and urban samples characterized by variability in immigration history. To address this limitation, family profiles of sociodemographic and contextual risk…

A growing body of theoretical and empirical work has been attempting to answer the questions of how and how much of the effects of children's early experience may depend on their inner characteristics. Theory and evidence suggest that some children, notably those with difficult temperaments, are more susceptible to both negative and positive…

This research investigates key psychometric properties of the French Early Years Evaluation-Teacher Assessment measure designed to systematically assess kindergarten children across five social and academic developmental domains: awareness of self and environment, social skills and behaviour, cognitive abilities, language and communication, and…

Lying is a pervasive human behavior. Evidence to date suggests that from the age of 42 months onward, children become increasingly capable of telling lies in various social situations. However, there is limited experimental evidence regarding whether very young children will tell lies spontaneously. The present study investigated the emergence of…

We explored longitudinal effects of a two-generation preschool programme on receptive language scores in children (n = 78) at age 10 years, living with low income. Scores at four time-points, programme intake, exit, age 7, and age 10 years were measured using the "Peabody picture vocabulary test" (3rd ed.). Effects of culture…

Previous studies have demonstrated that various psychosocial risks are associated with poor cognitive functioning in children, and these risks frequently cluster together. In the current longitudinal study, we tested a model in which it was hypothesized that cumulative psychosocial adversity of mothers would have deleterious effects on children's…

Examined the association of neighborhood characteristics on competencies of Canadian preschoolers. Found that verbal ability positively related to residing in neighborhoods with affluent residents and negatively to residing in neighborhoods with poor residents and in neighborhoods with low cohesion, even after controlling for family SES. Behavior…

Language used in situations in which speakers cannot rely on shared social, physical, or historical contexts has been referred to as "decontextualized." Many researchers believe that the use of decontextualized language is at the core of literacy--that reading and writing are consummate acts of decontextualization. Somewhat intermediate…