Physical activity (PA) has been associated with cognitive performance in children, although the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. Objective: This study examined whether perceived physical fitness mediates the association between PA and cognitive outcomes, while exploring sex differences. Sex-stratified multigroup structural equation modeling was conducted using cross-sectional baseline data from the Break4Brain project (n = 722 [354 girls], aged 10-12). PA was not associated with cognitive flexibility in either sex. In girls, PA was negatively associated with selective attention (beta = -0.22, p = 0.002), whereas no significant associations with cognitive outcomes were observed in boys. PA was positively associated with perceived physical fitness in boys (beta = 0.51, p < 0.001) and girls (beta = 0.56, p < 0.001). In girls, perceived physical fitness was positively associated with selective attention (beta = 0.35, p < 0.001) and significantly mediated the relationship between PA and selective attention (beta = 0.17, 95% CI [0.08, 0.26]). These findings suggest sex-specific pathways linking PA, perceived physical fitness, and cognitive performance.
By the end of primary school, the poorest UK pupils are around a year behind their peers in terms of educational attainment. This gap doubles by the age of 16. Using longitudinal data from the demographically representative Study of Cognition, Adolescents, and Mobile Phones (SCAMP), we previously showed that working memory (WM) gaps also widen during adolescence. In the current study, SCAMP data were linked with data from the UK Department for Education's National Pupil Database (n = 2726). Analyses showed that differences in WM skill development mediated some of the widening socioeconomic gradient in educational attainment during adolescence. Interestingly, some (parental occupation and income poverty), but not all aspects of socioeconomic status (parental education), predicted individual differences in academic progress via WM. While correlational, these results provide an important starting point for understanding different ways in which socioeconomic status might impact attainment during adolescence.
By all accounts, the "science of reading" movement in education policy and practice is one of the most successful movements in recent educational history, and yet a critical gap remains between the scientific consensus and classroom implementation. As conversations loom about better research translation to address this implementation problem, we argue that both an evolved science of reading and the development of an "engineering of reading" are required to solve it. Building on historical calls for engineering perspectives in education, we analyze the limitations of purely scientific approaches and demonstrate how an engineering framework could bridge the gap between reading research and classroom practice. Through an examination of the logic and assumptions of both scientific and engineering approaches, we propose that reading instruction, with its robust evidence base, presents an ideal opportunity to transform how we approach educational implementation. The article concludes by addressing ongoing challenges and tensions in the field, suggesting that an engineering perspective could offer practical solutions for translating reading science into effective practice in classrooms and schools.
Collaboration across researchers and educators is needed to ensure that educators have access to effective, practical early mathematics assessment and instructional tools and strategies. The Assessment and Instruction for Mathematics (AIM) Collective is a dynamic community of researchers and educators in Canada committed to sharing evidence-informed, teacher-approved math education tools and resources. Through our partnerships, researchers and educators have learned from each other and achieved shared research goals. The model developed by AIM is one way of building and sustaining the relationships needed to support this collaborative work. In this paper, we share what we have learned about the importance of working collaboratively to ensure uptake of early assessment and instruction practices based in research and feasible in classrooms. We highlight one example project done in partnership with a school board that demonstrates impact on student mathematics achievement from combining researchers' strengths at assessment and educators' expertise at developing instructional activities that are well suited to their classrooms.
For early years practitioners, promoting language development in educational settings is of fundamental importance. We propose that the use of co-speech sign is a key topic of debate in this regard, and one which is significantly under-studied. This article presents the Early Years Sign Survey, which was designed to map current practice by early years practitioners and determine how co-speech sign is viewed and valued. Data were analyzed from 466 UK practitioners. 79% of respondents use sign with children in their setting, with Makaton being most frequently reported. Practitioners overwhelmingly, but not universally, view sign positively. Perceived benefits included increased opportunities for children to express themselves, reduced frustration, and increased inclusion. Perceived drawbacks included children's over-reliance on sign and difficulties implementing sign consistently. The use of co-speech sign represents a strong trend in early years education, and one which urgently requires an evidence base to better understand and guide it.
Machine learning (ML) algorithms have been increasingly used to predict learning disability (LD) risk across various disciplines, but the effectiveness of different algorithms remains unclear. We summarize the literature on ML applications for the identification and classification of LDs using behavioral (e.g., phoneme manipulation and sound blending), behavioral biometric (handwriting, keyboarding, eye-movements, facial expressions), and neuroimaging (e.g., EEG, fMRI) data. We use multi-level meta-analysis to understand how classification statistics performed across data sources, populations, study designs and purpose, algorithms (e.g., support vector machines), and model building approaches (e.g., feature selection, hyperparameter tuning), among other study- and model-level characteristics. The meta-analysis included 41 primary studies and 331 ML models. Across algorithms, pooled accuracy estimates ranged from 0.75 to 0.88. Factors such as sample composition (e.g., grade level), types of data (e.g., brain imaging vs. checklists), and inclusion of academic skills (e.g., spelling and executive functions) had varying effects depending on the algorithm, but even the most predictive models were subject to substantial residual heterogeneity. Overall, the findings provide a baseline snapshot of an emergent literature and the conclusions are expected to evolve as primary studies adopt more standardized and comprehensive reporting beyond model accuracy, use larger and more diverse samples (particularly for biological data sources), incorporate external validation, and more explicitly address equity and generalizability in model development and evaluation.
Substantial effort has been dedicated to understanding the role of executive functions (EFs) in children's academic achievement. However, to understand how EFs, including working memory, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility help with academic skills, we need more experimental rather than correlational approaches. Methods for experimentally manipulating EFs are often developed in the adult literature, and developmental science stands to benefit substantially from these sophisticated techniques. In this article, I outline key methods for manipulating EFs and indicate the frequency of their use. In sum, inhibitory control is at an exciting stage with experimental methods being applied to academic skills for the first time. Cognitive flexibility has promising ideas, and both inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility could use working memory as a benchmark for assessing their progress. This article serves as a reference point for researchers investigating executive functions, which I encourage cognitive and developmental researchers to build upon to advance our knowledge of academic development.
Reading anxiety is conceptualized as a fear of reading that is correlated with but a separate construct from general anxiety and reading achievement. Using a sample of 408 twin children across the United States in third through ninth grade, we plan to empirically investigate the genetic and environmental factors contributing to individual differences in reading anxiety, and how these factors are accounted for by the major correlates of general anxiety and reading achievement. First, we will use regression modeling to determine the extent to which there is variance unique to reading anxiety that is not explained by reading achievement and general anxiety. Second, we will use twin modeling to determine the extent of the genetic and environmental variance on reading anxiety, after accounting for common genetic and environmental variance shared with general anxiety and reading achievement. The data has already been collected, but none of the analyses have been run.
This meta-regression explores relationships between executive functions (EFs) inhibition, shifting, and working memory (WM) in children with dyslexia only, ADHD only, and both dyslexia and ADHD. Those with combined conditions (CC) had greater effect sizes (ES) for verbal WM, inhibition, and shifting. The largest ES were for verbal WM in subjects with CC (1.00) and in subjects with dyslexia only (0.88). This study helps create an EF profile of dyslexic students and compares their EFs to peers with ADHD and CC. Findings suggest that students with CC may be more impacted by EFs of verbal WM, inhibition, and shifting than those with single disabilities, and those with dyslexia alone may be impacted by all EFs, but especially verbal WM. Practical implications are discussed, such as considering the impact of all EFs on dyslexic students throughout the evaluation and treatment processes, even if they do not have diagnosed comorbid ADHD.
How do smartphone policies shape students' experiences in the classroom? Smartphone presence has been linked with greater distraction and can undermine enjoyment in social contexts, but the effects of having smartphones out in the classroom have received less attention. We randomly assigned 234 college students to attend a 30-min lecture where they were told to either put their phones away or leave their phones out. We evaluated how these instructions affected students' distraction, attention, enjoyment, and comprehension of lecture content. Students instructed to put smartphones away reported less distraction during the lecture compared to students instructed to leave smartphones out. However, no other differences emerged. Our results suggest that, despite evidence that smartphones can undermine enjoyment and learning, instructing students to put smartphones away had limited impact in this specific context. Limitations and potential implications for classroom engagement and learning are discussed.
Many children from minoritized backgrounds and/or low-income homes exhibit reading difficulties. Several of these children may also speak a dialect of English that differs from the mainstream or general forms of English found in most textbooks. In the present study, we examined Nonmainstream American English (NMAE) use and the nature of its relation to reading comprehension. We explored dialect frequency in both an oral and a written narrative task among 250 first-, second-, and third-grade students. We found that children's NMAE use varied by race, income level, gender, age, and context (oral or written). Using structural equation modeling, we found that controlling for children's demographic backgrounds and grade, NMAE use in oral and written contexts was related to reading comprehension. However, this relation was completely mediated by two powerful and well-established predictors of reading comprehension-word reading and listening comprehension. Our study provides evidence that instruction focusing on component skills of reading using dialect-informed instruction could potentially inform future intervention studies and practice in classrooms.
Highly decorated classroom visual environments can be a source of distraction that may hamper children's learning. Reductions in learning are hypothesized to be due to children dividing their attention between the features of the visual environment and lesson content; however, to date, there is no direct evidence to support this possibility. We test this hypothesis by examining whether kindergarten children (N = 23) in the United States incidentally encode their visual environment while off-task and whether attention to the environment is associated with reduced learning. Results indicate children encoded features of the classroom visual environment with reasonable accuracy. Critically, the more time children spent off-task, the better they encoded the classroom displays, and the worse they performed on the learning assessments. These findings highlight the importance of re-conceptualizing how classroom environments are designed in order to reduce attentional competition and better support children's learning.
Differences in audiovisual processing may influence language development in autism. We characterized preferential looking to temporally synchronous audiovisual speech in fifty infants (28 elevated-likelihood [54% male]; 22 population-level-likelihood [50% male]) aged 12-18 months. We first tested whether preferential looking to synchronous audiovisual speech differed between groups; population-level-likelihood infants demonstrated greater preferential looking to synchronous audiovisual speech relative to elevated-likelihood infants by 18 months. We then assessed whether preferential looking to synchronous audiovisual speech was related to concurrent expressive language (1) directly, (2) via vocalization complexity, and (3) as moderated by age, sex, and familial likelihood group. Infants completed an eye tracking task and standardized communication and language assessments at 12-18 months. The population-level-likelihood infants demonstrated greater preferential looking to synchronous audiovisual speech relative to elevated-likelihood infants by 18 months. Preferential looking to synchronous audiovisual speech was not directly and unconditionally associated with concurrent expressive language. However, moderation and mediation analyses showed that preferential looking to synchronous audiovisual speech was significantly associated with concurrent expressive language through increased vocalization complexity in male infants. Implications for research, theory, and clinical practice are discussed.
Though children's learning occurs through daily experiences, few studies have examined how variability in those experiences predict day-to-day learning. Here, we explored associations among learning, attention, and parental stress within and across children. Children aged 5-7 (N = 103, M age = 6.3 years) participated in eight virtual science lessons over 2 weeks (N = 813 lessons). Within-child, greater attention during lessons predicted greater learning (d within = .23). Within-child, parent stress was not associated with attention or learning, but across children, greater parent stress was associated with lower attention (d between = -.63). Children's attention (d within = -.21) and science learning (d within = -.24) declined across lessons. Declines in learning were stronger for children whose parents reported higher levels of daily stress (d = -.27). These results suggest that differences in children's science learning may emerge from differences in attention in the moment and variability in learning trajectories over time.
A general consensus exists that disabilities are harder to treat in older students and improvements are harder to demonstrate on standardized tests. This study used advanced psychometric modeling and computer simulation to examine factors affecting the sensitivity of the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test to intervention effects in low ability, middle school students and to examine the possibility that off-level testing may increase sensitivity to treatment effects. We examine why test sensitivity may vary with student ability and test form used for selection before using computer simulation to examine sensitivity to 10 patterns and sizes of treatment effects. Off-level testing offered only small improvements to sensitivity. At the same time, findings raised concerns that the lack of effects in real treatment studies may stem from treatments whose effects are either weak or inconsistent and highlighted the failure of intervention research to comprehensively consider psychometric characteristics of measures in designing treatment studies.
Executive function (EF) is crucial in cognitive development, yet current research remains focused on Minority world societies, overlooking the diverse populations in underrepresented countries. This manuscript addresses the cultural biases in widely used EF assessments and the need for culturally relevant tools from a Latin American perspective. By examining overlooked populations in the majority world countries, I argue that current EF evaluation methods fail to account for the cultural and socioeconomic contexts that shape cognitive performance. Through examples from Brazil and similar contexts, this paper underscores the urgency of adapting EF assessments to reflect human diversity. I propose specific recommendations, including cross-cultural collaborations, mixed-method approaches, engaging local communities in the design of assessments, and the development of context-specific norms. By addressing these gaps, the field of EF research can advance toward a more inclusive and accurate understanding of cognitive development across diverse global populations.
Optimal parent-child interactions are characterized by interpersonal synchrony (reading/responding to each other's cues). Parent-infant EEG hyperscanning measures neural synchrony; however, this has not been examined in hospitalized preterm infants. Our pilot prospective observational cohort study included nine mother-infant dyads in the neonatal intensive care unit between 32 and 36 weeks corrected age. Each dyad completed parenting questionnaires and EEG recordings containing three conditions: (1) baseline, (2) mindful breathing, (3) telling the baby a meaningful story using infant-directed speech. Circular correlation coefficient (CCorr) quantified mother-infant neural synchrony. Three time periods of neural synchrony between baseline and story-telling conditions were found. No significant differences were observed between baseline and mindful breathing. This study provides the first evidence that periods of neural synchrony are present during real-time interaction between mother and hospitalized preterm infant. Furthermore, greater neural synchrony was associated with higher parental attunement, measured with the validated Baby Care Questionnaire. This study establishes EEG hyperscanning as a feasible method to measure dyadic synchrony between preterm infants and their caregivers and highlights possible opportunities for interventions to promote interpersonal engagement in hospitalized preterm infants.
The sensory-neural temporal sampling (TS) theory of language acquisition emphasizes the role of individual differences in speech rhythm processing. According to this theory, neural oscillations track loudness or amplitude modulation (AM) patterns—rhythmic fluctuations in speech intensity or energy—across multiple timescales. These nested AM rhythms, which occur universally across languages, support the parsing of stress patterns, syllables, and onset-rime units. Accurate tracking of these rhythms facilitates linguistic comprehension. Although rhythm-based language interventions that align motor and oral rhythms have shown benefits, existing approaches have not systematically targeted the full hierarchy of nested AM rhythms. The present intervention, developed in Spanish, is structured around musical meter, which organizes smaller nested units across multiple timescales. A series of motor activities that should indirectly engage multiple AM timescales are proposed, aimed at enhancing language development. The intervention is highly engaging and is explained in detail, along with predicted music-language enhancements within the framework of TS theory.
This study aimed to investigate both the relationship between parent-reported habitual exercise and attention in young children and the immediate effects of different acute exercise intensities on their attention performance. Using a two-phase design, the study first employed parent questionnaires from 180 children aged 5-6 years in a quasi-experimental group comparison, followed by a behavioral experiment where 157 of these children were assigned to four exercise conditions to measure attention after acute exercise. Results from the parent reports showed that light habitual exercise correlated with multiple attention components, most strongly with stability (r = .27, p < .01). Vigorous exercise correlated with distribution and shift (r = .16-.18, all ps < .05). Under various exercise intensities, the attention ability of children with more habitual exercise was significantly better than that of children with less exercise (all ps < 0.05), with large effect sizes (Cohen's d = .61-1.57). Data from the behavioral experiment showed that children in the acute moderate-intensity exercise group scored highest in attention span, distribution, and stability (eta(2)(p) = .06-.25, all ps < .05). In conclusion, regular engagement in light-to-vigorous physical activity may be associated with healthier development of attention abilities in early childhood. Acute moderate-intensity exercise transiently enhances children's attention span, stability, and distribution performance within 10 min post-exercise, whereas acute vigorous-intensity exercise reduces attention span during this immediate post-exercise period.
Replicability has become a heated issue in empirical science. In interdisciplinary fields, such as dyslexia research, replications are deemed challenging due to the linguistic, cognitive, and contextual complexity of literacy. We discuss whether dyslexia research faces a replicability crisis and the implications of replicability issues for researchers, educators, and practitioners. We examine potential causes of low replicability specific to dyslexia studies, including conceptual, methodological, and statistical variances observed in the context of psycho- and neurolinguistics. We argue that understanding the sources of variability is crucial for distinguishing between non-replication and non-generalization. Embracing variability while increasing transparency and specificity in scientific reports can ultimately help build robust theories in dyslexia research. We advocate for the development of valid instruments, along with the promotion of individual difference research and large-scale replications, to inform researchers and practitioners on what can make dyslexia research more replicable.
