The present study tests two predictions stemming from the hypothesis that a source of difficulty with rational numbers is interference from whole number magnitude knowledge. First, inhibitory control should be an independent predictor of fraction understanding, even after controlling for working memory. Second, if the source of interference is…

Executive function is the set of cognitive skills needed for goal directed behavior and is a strong predictor of academic success (Best, 2014). The present study examines the effectiveness of a custom video game designed to train the executive function skill of shifting--being able to efficiently shift attention from 1 task to another. In…

Four experiments examined the interplay of memory and creative cognition, showing that attempting to think of new uses for an object can cause the forgetting of old uses. Specifically, using an adapted version of the Alternative Uses Task (Guilford, 1957), participants studied several uses for a variety of common household objects before…

Children's self-regulation, including components of executive function such as inhibitory control, is related concurrently and longitudinally with elementary school children's reading and math abilities. Although several recent studies have examined links between preschool children's self-regulation or executive function and their academic skill…

In the present study, we investigated genetic and environmental effects on motor impulsivity from childhood to late adolescence using a longitudinal sample of twins from ages 9 to 18 years. Motor impulsivity was assessed using errors of commission (no-go errors) in a visual go/no-go task at 4 time points: ages 9-10, 11-13, 14-15, and 16-18 years.…

Associations among 53 primiparous women's Adult Attachment Interview classifications (secure-autonomous vs. insecure-dismissing) and physiological and self-reported responses to infant crying were explored. Heart rate, skin conductance levels, and respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) were recorded continuously. In response to the cry,…

This study evaluated whether the positive association between early autonomy-supportive parenting and children's subsequent achievement is mediated by children's executive functions. Using observations of mothers' parenting from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (N…

The current study investigated the scope of bilingual language control differentiating between whole-language control involving control of an entire lexicon specific to 1 language and lexical-level control involving only a restricted set of recently activated lexical representations. To this end, we tested 60 Dutch-English (Experiment 1) and 64…

Research on retrieval-induced forgetting has shown that retrieval can cause the forgetting of related or competing items in memory (Anderson, Bjork, & Bjork, 1994). In the present research, we examined whether an analogous phenomenon occurs in the context of creative problem solving. Using the Remote Associates Test (RAT; Mednick, 1962), we…

The present study investigated whether (a) growth patterns related to cognitive processing (working memory, updating, inhibition) differed in subgroups of children with reading disabilities (RD) and (b) growth in working memory (executive processing) predicted growth in other cognitive areas, such as reading and math. Seventy-three children (ages…

Improvements in motor sequence performance have been observed after a delay involving sleep. This finding has been taken as evidence for an active sleep consolidation process that enhances subsequent performance. In a review of this literature, however, the authors observed 4 aspects of data analyses and experimental design that could lead to…