Achievement emotions have received increasing attention in research on adolescence and young adulthood, but little is known about these emotions in the early years of schooling. Studies addressing the development of different achievement emotions and their linkages with achievement during these years are largely lacking. The present longitudinal…

Background: Learning is a self-regulated loop where learning strategies and achievements are interrelated. In reading, although some studies have explored the relationship between different learning strategies (memorization, elaboration and control) and reading achievement, little is known about how they interact over time. Even though the…

Background: Math anxiety (MA) and math achievement are generally negatively associated. Aims: This study investigated whether and how classroom engagement behaviors mediate the negative association between MA and math achievement. Sample: Data were drawn from an ongoing longitudinal study that examines the roles of affective factors in math…

Despite the widespread use of rapid automatized naming (RAN) tasks in reading and mathematics research, little is known about the direction of their relation. Thus, in this longitudinal study, we examined the direction of the relation between RAN and reading/mathematics accuracy and fluency. One-hundred and eighty-three Grade 1 Chinese children…

Recent research has indicated that science-based achievement gaps open early in children's educational careers and are explained largely by malleable factors. Two potentially important variables to consider include children's executive function (EF) and learning-related behaviors exhibited in the classroom. These variables have been identified as…

Spatial skills have been consistently linked to mathematics achievement in older students and adults, but we know little about their relationship to mathematics achievement in elementary school. This study examined how spatial skills influenced the development of number sense, and subsequent mathematics competency, as students progressed from the…

State-mandated tests have taken center stage for assessing student learning and for holding teachers and students accountable for achieving adequate progress. What types of early knowledge predict performance on these tests, especially among low-income children who are at risk for poor performance? We report on a longitudinal study of 519…

The contributions of domain-general abilities and domain-specific knowledge to subsequent mathematics achievement were longitudinally assessed (n = 167) through 8th grade. First grade intelligence and working memory and prior grade reading achievement indexed domain-general effects, and domain-specific effects were indexed by prior grade…

Background: Prior studies on fraction magnitude understanding focused mainly on students with relatively sufficient formal instruction on fractions whose fraction magnitude understanding is relatively mature. Aim: This study fills a research gap by investigating fraction magnitude understanding in the early stages of fraction instruction. It…

This study utilized latent class analysis (LCA) to identify 5 discernible profiles of Latino children's (N = 1,253) social-emotional, physical, and cognitive school readiness at the time of kindergarten entry. In addition, a growth mixture modeling (GMM) approach was used to identify 3 unique literacy achievement trajectories, across Grades 2-5,…

Children with higher working memory or updating (WMU) capacity perform better in math. What is less clear is whether and how this relation varies with grade. Children (N = 673, kindergarten to Grade 9) participated in a 4-year cross-sequential study. Data from 3 WMU (Listening Recall, Mr. X, and an updating task) and a standardized math task…

Children experience good and bad days in their performance. Although this phenomenon is well-known to teachers, parents, and students it has not been investigated empirically. We examined whether children's working memory performance varies systematically from day to day and to which extent fluctuations at faster timescales (i.e., occasions,…

Background: It is often argued that the negative development of intrinsic motivation in elementary school strongly depends on the presence of school grades because grades represent extrinsic consequences and achievement feedback that are supposed to influence intrinsically motivated behaviour. However, only a few studies have tested this…

This longitudinal study investigated the associations among children's externalizing problems, task-avoidant behavior, and academic performance in early school years. The participants were 586 children (43% girls, 57% boys). Data pertaining to externalizing problems (teacher ratings) and task-avoidant behaviors (mother and teacher ratings) were…

This study investigated moderating effects of classroom friendship network structures (centralization and density), teacher-student attunement on aggression and popularity, and gender on changes in the social status of aggression over 1 school year. Longitudinal multilevel analyses with 2 time points (fall and spring) were conducted on a sample of…