The concept of "Home Learning Environment" (HLE) covers activities in a family providing intellectual stimulation for a child, such as reading to him or her or visiting libraries. Numerous studies have shown an association between HLE and children's cognitive development. In this longitudinal study, we focus on HLE as a predictor…

Mathematical competencies are important not only for academic achievement at school but also for professional success later in life. Although we know a lot about the impact of "Home Literacy Environment" on the development of early linguistic competencies, research on "Home Numeracy Environment" (HNE) and the assessment of its…

This study examined the development of school-related causality beliefs which are children's generalized perceptions of the utility or power of different categories of specific means in producing school outcomes. Based on the action theory perspective, we analyzed the developmental model of these beliefs as well as the trajectories of the…

The present study examined the use of narrative categories and mental state words in the fictional, personal, and hypothetical stories written by 150 children in the third, fourth, and fifth grades of primary school. There were three main results. First, children were better able to write fictional and hypothetical than personal stories, when…

The internal/external (I/E) frame of reference model (Marsh, "Am Educ Res J" 23:129-149, 1986) conceptualizes students' self-concepts as being formed by dimensional as well as social comparison processes. In the present study, the I/E model was tested and extended in a sample of elementary school children. Core academic skills of…

The observation and assessment of quality of teacher--child interactions in elementary school settings are increasingly recognized as important; however, research is still very limited in European countries. In this study, we examined the quality of the interactions between teacher and children in first-grade classrooms in Portugal and the extent…

The study investigates the preschool readiness of moderately preterm children and, in particular, the likely presence of learning disabilities at preschool age. Its theoretical model detects linguistic comprehension and expression; memory-related metacognition and cognition skills; orientation and motor coordination skills; premathematics and…

Academic hardiness is a personality characteristic that may differentiate students who avoid challenging academic course work from others who are willing to pursue these types of challenges. Research findings have demonstrated the need to understand and examine the construct in different life stages and cultural settings, and there are additional…

Ten trios of children from 4 to 6 years old were observed in a situation where one child (the expert) who had learned the rules of a game explained these rules to two other children at the same time (the novices): one with whom s/he had a positive relationship and the other with whom her/his relationship was negative. Within this asymmetrical…

The current study examined the role of preschoolers' motivation, operationalized as persistence, in the formation of language and math skills at kindergarten. The participants were 263 children from diverse ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds. Demographic information, child persistence, and early cognitive-linguistic skills were assessed at…

Socioeconomic inequalities in children's skills and capabilities begin early in life and can have detrimental effects on future success in school. The present study examined the relationships between school readiness and socioeconomic (SES) inequalities using teacher reports of the Short Early Development Instrument (Janus et al. 2005) in a…

The present study had two aims: (1) to examine kindergarten (Kg) and first grade (G1) children's early word structure knowledge, that is letter, phonological, morphological, and orthographic knowledge, and (2) to provide evidence of specific links between these various types of knowledge and word reading and spelling performance assessed in G1. A…

In order to study the influence on memorization of external inputs as well as children's own strategies, we examined both parental discourses in terms of distancing (Sigel, 1970) and spontaneous rehearsal by children during a memory task. Our aim was to assess the influence of each factor for children between 3 and 5 years of age. In our study of…

Individual differences in academic success were investigated in a geographically defined whole-population sample of very preterm children with a gestational age of less than 32 weeks or a birth weight of less than 1500 gm. The sample consisted of 264 very preterm children (75.6% of German-speaking survivors) and 264 controls matched for gender,…

Over the last fifteen years, increasing numbers of fathers have been attending medical or day-care centers for young children, traditionally "reserved" for mothers and babies. Thus the professionals who work there are able to take an active part in the "co-construction of the fathers" by accompanying their emerging fatherhood. The…