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Organizational tasks and processes are preconditions for organizing professional learning teams but are often neglected in research. In nine schools, we examined which organizational tasks and processes were set up for lesson study, a form of a professional learning team, and in what way. Schools set up three organizational tasks and processes: recruiting participants, giving credit for time-investment, and scheduling meetings. Recruitment of participants was sometimes difficult when potential participants worked autonomously within their departments or teams. Credit for time-investment was often constrained as schools gave credit in a way that made lesson study an additional workload. Scheduling meetings was very challenging. The scheduled meetings were considered satisfactory in only one school. Here, the school leader collaborated and communicated with her teachers to plan useful and uninterrupted meetings in the timetable. Our results show that organizational work is not mundane and simple but complex and vital for embedding professional development in schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children engage cognitive control reactively when they encounter conflicts; however, they can also resolve conflicts proactively. Recent studies have begun to clarify the mechanisms that support the use of proactive control in children; nonetheless, sufficient knowledge has not been accumulated regarding these mechanisms. Using behavioral and pupillometric measures, we tested the novel possibility that 5‐year‐old children (N = 58) learn to use proactive control via the acquisition of abstract task knowledge that captures regularities of the task. Participants were assigned to either a proactive training group or a control training group. In the proactive training group, participants engaged in a training phase where using proactive control was encouraged, followed by a test phase using different stimuli where both proactive and reactive control could be used. In the control training group, participants engaged in a training phase where both cognitive control strategies could be used, followed by a similarly‐structured test phase using different stimuli. We demonstrated children in the control training group responded more quickly and accurately and showed greater cue‐related pupil dilation in the test phase than in the training phase. However, there were no differences in response times, accuracies, and pupil dilation between the proactive and control training groups in the training and test phases. These findings suggest that prior task experience, that goes beyond specific knowledge about the timing of task goal activation, can lead children to engage more proactive control endogenously, even if they are not directly encouraged to do so. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous examinations of working memory impairments in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have predominantly focused on discreet visuospatial and phonological subsystem processes, as well as the domain-general central executive. The episodic buffer component of working memory, a neurocognitive process that allows for temporary storage and maintenance of bound episodes/features of information, is understudied in ADHD and initial findings have been equivocal. Heterogeneity in previous findings may reflect between-study methodological variability, floor effects unrelated to episodic buffer processes (i.e., excessive central executive demands), and limitations associated with previous investigations' use of novel paradigms. This study examined ADHD-related episodic buffer processing via an established paradigm (Allen et al., 2006) in well-defined groups of children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and typically developing peers (TD). Seventy-one children (ADHD n = 34, TD n = 37) aged 8–12 years (M = 9.81, SD = 1.50; 32% female) completed two conditions of a computerized working memory task that presented single feature stimuli (color and shape), and a third condition that presented dual-feature stimuli (color/shape binding). Overall, the ADHD group exhibited a large-magnitude deficit during the color/shape binding condition (d =.77), and both groups evinced worse performance accuracy in the color/shape binding condition compared to the single feature color and shape conditions. Collectively, these findings appear to provide evidence that children with ADHD exhibit large magnitude episodic buffer deficits that are not attributable to visuospatial subsystem or domain-general central executive processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the equiprobable Go/NoGo task lacks the dominant Go imperative of the usual Go/NoGo (with more Go than NoGo stimuli), it is generally regarded as involving little inhibition. However, children have relative difficulty with this task, and have a large frontal NoGo N2. We previously found that this 'child N2' does play an inhibitory role, with larger frontal N2b associated with fewer commission errors. Here we investigated age-related developmental differences in the N2b and other components in the equiprobable Go/NoGo task. Two groups of eighteen Younger children (aged 8.0 to 10.3 years) and eighteen Older children (aged 10.4 to 12.8 years), matched on sex, were presented with three stimulus blocks each containing 100 Go and 100 NoGo tone stimuli in random order. Four temporal PCAs, each with unrestricted VARIMAX rotation, separately quantified the Go and NoGo ERPs of each group, and similar components were extracted from each set. Most identified components were differentially enhanced to either Go or NoGo, as in adults, supporting a previously-proposed differential sequential processing schema. The Older group had Go component latencies that were systematically reduced by some 7.4% from the Younger group, and they displayed faster RT and fewer omission and commission errors. Between subjects in the Older group, larger frontocentral NoGo N2b was associated with fewer commission errors. Hence the NoGo N2b in this paradigm can be interpreted as an individual marker of inhibition in older, but not young, children. • Separate condition and group PCAs reduced misallocation of variance. • We revisited child ERPs/behaviour in a two-group equiprobable Go/NoGo task. • Confirmed child NoGo N2b/inhibition link, in this task, but only in older children. • Novel Go and NoGo early Na and a P1/N1a complex were noted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper summarises the combined advice of the Interdisciplinary Task & Finish Group on the Role of Children in Transmission, with input from participants of NERVTAG, EMG, SPI-M and SPI-B. It looks at the variety of risks associated with reopening schools and colleges and with keeping them closed. The paper was written last July, as policy-makers were beginning to plan for the return of children and young people to education settings in September (or August in Scotland). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this study was to systematically analyze the literature surrounding dual-task (DT) effects on gait in typically developing children (TDC) and to conduct meta-analyses where applicable. After reviewing the abstracts of 676 articles, a total of 22 studies were included. The outcomes of interest were relative change in gait speed, cadence, stride length, double support time, variability in stride length between single and DT walking; and the exposures were concurrent tasks used for DT gait assessment. DT significantly affected each gait parameter (point estimate (PE), ranged from PE, -0.10; 95% CI, -0.13 to -0.08; p < .001 to PE, -0.66; 95% CI, -0.94 to -0.38; p < .001). The strength of DT effects varied by the concurrent task used. The greatest DT effect on gait speed, which was the most commonly presented outcome, was reported when upper extremity complex functional tasks (PE, -0.36; 95% CI, -0.49 to -0.23; p < .001, fine motor tasks (PE, -0.35; 95% CI, -0.38 to -0.32; p < .001), and verbal fluency tasks (PE, -0.26; 95% CI, -0.30 to -0.21; p < .001) were completed concurrently with gait. Children and adolescents experience performance decrements when they walk under DT conditions. Concurrent tasks differentially affect the degree of DT interference for each gait parameter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction. Researchers have shown that the learners achieve higher levels of learning when they learn with the aim and expectation of teaching their content to others. Recently some motor behavior researchers have also examined this learning method, and have indicated that expecting to teach others improves motor learning in adults. The purpose of the present study was to examine the effect of expecting to teach others on the learning of a golf-putting task in children. Material and Methods. Participants consisted of 24 children (all males; Mage = 9.58; SD = 0.50 years) who were randomly assigned into two experimental groups. Participants in the group expecting to teach others were instructed as follows: "given that you have to teach golf putting to some people the day after the acquisition phase, you have the opportunity to practice this skill carefully today and tomorrow". Participants in the group expecting to be tested received the following instructions; "you have the opportunity to practice this skill carefully today and tomorrow expecting to be tested in this skill". Results. The results showed that the children in the group expecting to teach others had better accuracy scores relative to children in the group expecting to be tested in the retention phase (p = 0.05). Conclusions. The findings of this study suggest that promoting the expectation to teach others would improve motor learning in children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The end-state comfort (ESC) effect refers to the consistent tendency of healthy adults to end their movements in a comfortable end posture. In children with and without developmental coordination disorder (DCD), the results of studies focusing on ESC planning have been inconclusive, which is likely to be due to differences in task constraints. The present pilot study focused on the question whether children with and without DCD were able to change their planning strategy and were more likely to plan for ESC when demanded by complex object manipulations at the end of a task. To this end, we examined ESC planning in 18 children with and without DCD (aged 5–11years) using the previously used sword-task and the newly developed hammer-task. In the sword-task, children had to insert a sword in a wooden block, which could be relatively easily completed with an uncomfortable end-posture. In the hammer-task, children had to strike down a nail in a wooden pounding bench, which required additional force and speed demands, making it relatively difficult to complete the movement with an uncomfortable end-posture. In line with our hypothesis, the results demonstrated that children with and without DCD were more likely to plan for ESC on the hammer-task compared with the sword-task. Thus, while children with and without DCD show inconsistent ESC planning on many previously used tasks, the present pilot study shows that many of them are able to take into account the end-state of their movements if demanded by task constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We localize the sources of brain activity of children with epilepsy based on electroencephalograph (EEG) recordings acquired during a visual discrimination working memory task. For the numerical solution of the inverse problem, with the aid of age‐specific MRI scans processed from a publicly available database, we use and compare three regularization numerical methods, namely the standardized low resolution brain electromagnetic tomography (sLORETA), the weighted minimum norm estimation (wMNE) and the dynamic statistical parametric mapping (dSPM). We show that all three methods provide the same spatio‐temporal patterns of differences between the groups of epileptic and control children. In particular, our analysis reveals statistically significant differences between the two groups in regions of the parietal cortex indicating that these may serve as "biomarkers" for diagnostic purposes and ultimately localized treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The benefits of task-based interaction in Second Language Learning (SLL) have been made increasingly evident in the literature. However, unlike adult studies, only recently has interaction research on EFL children grown in popularity. Most children-based research has focused primarily on Negotiation of Meaning, while other age-related aspects, including a more comprehensive analysis of how adults and children perform and resolve tasks, remain relatively unexplored. This paper addresses this gap by analysing the similarities and differences in the task-related strategies of twenty children aged 8 and 9 and fourteen adult L1-Spanish EFL learners at low levels of competence in paired interaction. Results provide evidence of clear age-related differences, as adults were more consistent and approached the task in a more predictable and efficient fashion. Findings also point to task repetition as a key factor leading to a more successful performance in both groups, even more markedly in the case of children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigated the immediate consequences of differently paced videos on behaviour and neural activity during response inhibition. Forty 7-year-olds watched a fast- or slow-paced video and completed a go/no-go task. Compared to the slow-paced-video group, children in the fast-paced-video group made more no-go errors. There was also an interaction between pace and no-go response type (correct, wrong) for the N2 and P3 peak latencies. In the slow-paced group, both components peaked earlier for correct response withholds. This usual pattern of activation was absent in the fast-paced group. Video pace appears to affect behaviour and the neural responses involved in inhibition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Executive functions (EFs) have been assessed with performance-based measures and rating scales. Research has shown a lack of association between these two methods. One factor that might contribute to this difference is the structure provided on performance-based measures that is not provided on rating scales. This study examined the role of structure on self-directed task completion, an aspect of EF, using a novel unstructured performance-based task (UPT). Method: Children aged 8–12 years (38 attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, ADHD; 42 typically developing) and their caregivers participated. We compared performance on the UPT, performance-based measures of EF (Stroop test and Trail-Making Test), and a rating scale to assess EF (Barkley Deficits in Executive Functioning Scale–Children and Adolescents, BDEFS–CA). Results: Group differences were found across all measures. Significant associations emerged between the UPT and Stroop test, Trail-Making Test, and BDEFS–CA, but no significant associations were found between the Stroop test or Trail-Making Test and the BDEFS–CA. In regression analyses, performance-based tasks and the rating scale both uniquely predicted UPT performance. The UPT was a significant predictor of group status when entered with performance-based tasks, but the UPT did not enter as a significant predictor when entered with the rating scale. Conclusion: The UPT is a promising measure to assess self-directed task completion in children with ADHD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has found that children’s sharing with others relies on fairness norms, but also varies according to their social relationships. The current study focuses on the conflict between fairness and relationship, exploring their impacts across two resource allocation contexts. We used a parallel work task to explore the effect of relation‐ship with different recipients (friend, stranger, or disliked peer) on three allocation patterns (generous, fair, or selfish), when children directly allocated resources (distributive allocation), or applied different procedures to recipients (procedural application). Participants consisted of 123 Chinese children between the ages of 6 and 12. We found that in the distributive allocation context, in which participants directly decided the outcome, children pri‐marily considered their relationship with recipients when dividing resources, not fairness. However, in the proce‐dural application context, in which children could choose different allocation procedures for recipients, children pri‐marily preferred fairness, regardless of social relationship. Moreover, when making distributive allocations, 6‐ to 8‐year‐olds were more selfish toward their disliked peers, whereas 9‐ to 12‐year‐olds tended to be more fair and generous toward their friends and strangers. These find‐ings shed light on the link between social relationship and fairness within different allocation contexts among chil‐dren of Chinese cultural background.

Abstract Fear generalization, while adaptive, can be detrimental when occurring in excess. To this end a perceptual discrimination training task was created with a goal of decreasing fear overgeneralization. The current study tested the effectiveness of the training task among typically-developing children. Participants (n = 73) were randomly assigned into a training, placebo or no task group. Following a differential fear-conditioning task, participants in the first two groups underwent the discrimination training or placebo task. An assessment task was then administered. Finally, all participants completed a fear generalization test, consisting of 11 morphs ranging in perceptual similarity from the threat cue to the safety cue. Physiological and self-report measures were collected. Fear-conditioning was achieved in both physiological and self-report measures. Further, in the assessment task, the training group showed better perceptual discrimination than did the placebo group. Last, the training group exhibited less overgeneralization of affective stimuli as indicated by a physiological measure than did the two control conditions. Findings suggest that the perceptual discrimination training task effectively moderated fear overgeneralization in children. This adds to previous evidence of the task's effectiveness among adults. Highlights • A novel perceptual discrimination training task was assessed in a child sample. • The training group exhibited improved basic perceptual discrimination abilities. • Less overgeneralization of fear was observed in the training group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on children's prospective memory (PM) shows an increase of performance across childhood and provides first evidence that encoding strategies such as episodic future thinking (EFT; i.e., engaging in a vivid prospection of oneself performing future tasks) may improve performance. The present study aimed at testing whether the beneficial effects of EFT extend from typical lab-based tasks to more complex tasks with real life demands. Further, it was tested whether children's ability to project themselves into different perspectives (i.e., self-projection) moderates the effects of EFT encoding on PM. Overall, 56 children (mean age: M = 10.73 years) were included in this study who were randomly assigned to either an EFT or control condition. Children participated in a 'sightseeing tour' (ongoing activity) inside the lab with various socially relevant and neutral PM tasks embedded. Results showed significantly higher PM performance in the EFT compared to the control group. There was no difference between neutral and social PM tasks and no interaction between type of PM tasks with encoding condition. Further, self-projection did not moderate the effects of EFT encoding on PM. Results suggest that EFT is an effective strategy to improve children's everyday PM. These beneficial effects seem to occur independent from children's general ability to change perspectives and for different types of PM tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The developmental sequence of strategy use of the gear task was confirmed with DOWM. • Children develop from using sensorimotor strategies to abstract strategies. • The behavioral repertoire of strategy-use on the gear task changes microgenetically. • Sensorimotor experience seems crucial for developing abstract notions on STEM-topics. The Dynamic Overlapping Waves Model (DOWM) can model strategy use in problem-solving tasks for strategies that can be construed as developmentally and hierarchically ordered (Boom, 2015). We observed children's (M age = 11 years, SD = 6 months) strategy use during a task in which they had to find the rotation direction of the last gear in a series of connected gear chains, given the rotation direction of the first gear. Using DOWM, we found that strategy use was ordered as expected, from unskilled sensorimotor strategies to abstract strategies, and from less to more efficient in terms of speed and accuracy. This order aligns with the idea that perceptual learning is central to the emergence of abstract conceptual knowledge. Moreover, the current study shows that the DOWM does not preclude forward and backward transitions and even occasional transitions that skip certain strategies in the ordering. The DOWM seems a promising tool to developmentally capture the breadth of behavioral repertoire children display when they adopt new strategies for various problem-solving tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the publication I have facts about the effects of music of children. I present the psyhic and emotionality development of children in pre-school and primary school. The main task in the publication is presenting of music in a different light. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Peripheral cueing tasks can be used to measure reflexive (automatic) attention. In these tasks, increases in response time or RT (costs) typically follow contralateral (invalid) cues as attention must move from the location of the cue to the target. Reductions in RT (benefits) to a target typically follow ipsilateral (valid) cues because the cue draws attention to where the target will appear. Two exceptions to RT benefits are inhibition of return (IOR) and masking. IOR is the tendency to respond slower to targets that appear in locations attended within the last 200–2000 ms. Masking occurs when the visibility of a target is blocked by another stimulus (e.g., the cue). Herein, we describe two experiments, both using a modified Posner task with “earth rockets” as cues and “alien spaceships” as targets. Cues were equally likely to appear on the left or right side of a display following targets. Participants were instructed to press a left or right key corresponding to a left or right target. In Experiment 1, we obtained data from 203 children (10.58–16.55 years old). We discovered unexpected costs following cues that typically provide RT benefits. In Experiment 2, we explored IOR, masking, and age differences in the occurrence of these costs. We manipulated the cue-target temporal distance (“stimulus onset asynchrony” or SOA) to explore IOR and the cue-target spatial distance to explore masking. We also considered a wider age range. Sixty-three children and 41 young adults participated. Experiment 2 revealed a three-way interaction between SOA, spatial distance, and age. At the shorter SOA (100 ms) and moderate spatial distance, unexpected costs followed valid cues for younger children (7.07–10.15 years old). These costs also occurred in young adults (18.00–23.02 years old) following far distance cues at this SOA. At the longer SOA (200 ms), these costs followed moderate and far cues for younger children and near cues for young adults. Older children (10.31–14.92 years) did not have unexpected costs. We explain the findings in terms of masking, IOR, and possible developmental mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Task-based language teaching research has expanded substantially in foreign language (FL) contexts but most research studies have been carried out with young adults in university settings, despite the fact that FL programs for children are on the increase worldwide. However, there is a clear lack of research-based evidence of what children actually do while performing tasks, which is crucial in order to make decisions about appropriate educational provision, to inform policy makers, and to maximize children's learning opportunities. This paper focuses on current research on children in task-based programs both in mainstream English as a Foreign Language (EFL) and Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) contexts. It reviews studies that show how children successfully negotiate to make language meaningful, how they engage with the tasks and how they collaborate in different ways during task performance. Challenges and future research directions will be highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays and in the future we need knowledgeable, capable, thinking individuals with nonstandard thinking, affirming the best of their uniqueness. Appropriate methods and forms are needed for this to stimulate innovative thinking, to continuously improve the quality of training so that they can be trained and competitive on the labor market. For the formation of innovative thinking, it is necessary for children to be offered tasks with such a focus. The article proposes examples that provoke their interest and desire to think actively and innovately. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research examined whether induced joy influences fifth graders’ performance in literacy tasks. Children were asked to recall a joyful experience, used as a joy induction, before completing either a grammar (Study 1) or textual comprehension task (Study 2). The grammar task involved understanding at the surface level and retrieval of appropriate declarative and procedural knowledge, but limited elaboration unlike the textual comprehension task, which tackled inference generation. By differentiating tasks based on depth of processing required for completion we aimed at testing the validity of two concurrent hypotheses: that of a facilitating effect and that of a detrimental effect of induced joy. Compared to controls, joy induced children showed better performance on the grammar task – specifically children with lower language ability. No differences across groups emerged as a function of joy induction on the text comprehension task. Results are discussed with respect to emotion effects on cognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motor and cognitive growth in children may be influenced by football practice. Therefore the aim of this study was to assess whether a Football Training Program taken over 6 months would improve motor and cognitive performances in children. Motor skills concerned coordinative skills, running, and explosive legs strength. Cognitive abilities involved visual discrimination times and visual selective attention times. Forty-six children with chronological age of ∼9.10 years, were divided into two groups: Group 1 (n = 24) attended a Football Exercise Program and Group 2 (n = 22) was composed of sedentary children. Their abilities were measured by a battery of tests including motor and cognitive tasks. Football Exercise Program resulted in improved running, coordination, and explosive leg strength performances as well as shorter visual discrimination times in children regularly attending football courses compared with their sedentary peers. On the whole these results support the thesis that the improvement of motor and cognitive abilities is related not only to general physical activity but also to specific ability related to the ball. Football Exercise Programs is assumed to be a "natural and enjoyable tool" to enhance cognitive resources as well as promoting and encouraging the participation in sport activities from early development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Children show lower task performance compared to adults when learning a 1D task. • Coordination analyses indicated greater degree of exploration in children. • Children show limited adaptability in matching exploration to task demands. Motor learning in novel tasks requires exploration to find the appropriate coordination patterns to perform the task. Prior work has shown that compared to adults, children show limited exploration when learning a task that required using upper body movements to control a 2D cursor on a screen. Here, by changing the task dimensionality to 1D, we examined two competing hypotheses: whether children show limited exploration as a general strategy, or whether children are suboptimal in adapting their exploration to task dimensionality. Two groups of children (9- and 12-year olds), and one group of adults learned a virtual task that involved learning to control a cursor on the screen using movements of the upper body. Participants practiced the task for a single session with a total of 232 reaching movements. Results showed that 9-year olds show worse task performance relative to adults, as indicated by higher movement times and path lengths. Analysis of the coordination strategies indicated that both groups of children showed lower variance along the first principal component, suggesting that they had greater exploration than adults which was suboptimal for the 1D task. These results suggest that motor learning in children is characterized not by limited exploration per se, but by a limited adaptability in matching motor exploration to task dimensionality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] Level of gross motor competence is inversely related to weight status in childhood. [•] Obese children's reduced motor function is the mechanical consequence of their mass. [•] This study uses reaction time tasks to evaluate perceptual-motor function. [•] Childhood obesity appears to be associated with impaired perceptual-motor function. [•] Obese children's motor incompetence needs to be studied from a broader perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Merit is a key principle of fairness: rewards should be distributed according to how much someone contributed to a task. Previous research suggests that children have an early ability to take merit into account in third-party situations but that merit-based sharing in first-party contexts does not emerge until school-age. Here we provide evidence that three- and five-year-old children already use merit to share resources with others, even when sharing is costly for the child. In Study 1, a child and a puppet-partner collected coins that were later exchanged for rewards. We varied the work-contribution of both partners by manipulating how many coins each partner collected. Children kept fewer stickers in trials in which they had contributed less than in trials in which they had contributed more than the partner, showing that they took merit into account. Few children, however, gave away more than half of the stickers when the partner had worked more. Study 2 confirmed that children related their own work-contribution to their partner's, rather than simply focusing on their own contribution. Taken together, these studies show that merit-based sharing is apparent in young children; however it remains constrained by a self-serving bias. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Aim: To determine the impact of competitive and cooperative instructions on children’s motivation and performance of sensory tests. Subjects and methods: German children (n =202; 101 girls, 101 boys, 6–9year-olds) participated in liking and similarity tests after giving either (1) competitive: “I want to see if you can do it better than others”, (2) cooperative: “Would you like to help me”, (3) competitive–cooperative: “Would you like to help me to be better than the other group”, or (4) neutral instructions: “Could you perform this test”. Furthermore, they were asked questions about their motivation. Results: Competitive–cooperative instructions were associated high intrinsic motivation (p <0.05) and better ability to discriminate between different samples in terms of liking, than when other instructions were given. Competitive instructions were associated with a lower performance of the similarity test (p <0.05). The more children enjoyed the task the better they were able to perform the similarity test (p <0.05). Conclusion: German children’s sensory sensitivity can be increase by giving competitive–cooperative instructions. This is likely to be associated with a high intrinsic motivation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This study investigated the nature of resources involved in duration processing in 5- and 8-year-olds. The children were asked to reproduce the duration of a visual or auditory stimulus. They performed this task either alone or concurrently with an executive task (Experiment 1) or with a digit or visuospatial memory task (Experiment 2). The results showed that duration reproduction was systematically shorter in the dual-task condition than in the single-task one. Furthermore, timing an auditory stimulus decreased the proportion of accurate responses in the executive and digit memory tasks but not in the visuospatial memory task, whereas timing a visual stimulus decreased the proportion of accurate responses in the executive and visuospatial memory tasks but not in the digit memory task, at least to a lesser extent in the older children. This pattern of interference suggests that duration reproduction in children requires both the central executive and the slave memory system associated with the modality of the temporal stimulus. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Recent interest on executive functions in children has led to the development of tasks specifically designed to measure it. Stroop tasks adapted for children are an example. The Animal Stroop task devised by Wright, Waterman, Prescott, and Murdoch-Eaton (2003) solves limitations of previous Stroop paradigms for children and provides a sensitive measure of inhibitory control during childhood. We present results in this task from Portuguese children and adults grouped by age: 5/6-, 7/8-, 10/12-year olds and young adults. A significant improvement in accuracy and reduction in reaction times was observed with increasing age in all conditions, more markedly so in the incongruent condition. Lower accuracy and increased reaction times in the incongruent condition relative to the control one revealed that 5/6- and 7/8-year-old children have less inhibitory control than do 10/12-year olds and young adults. These results allow us to characterize the developmental pattern of the Stroop effect in this task, and show that it is a useful tool for the measurement of inhibitory control in young children (less than 10 years of age). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors explored mental-state reasoning ability among 72 preschoolers (ages 3-5 years) as a possible developmental mechanism for the well-known social loafing effect: diminished individual effort in a collaborative task. The authors expected that older children would outperform young children on standard mental-state reasoning tests and that they would display greater social loafing than younger children. In addition, we hypothesized that the ability to infer the mental states of others would be predictive of social loafing, but that the ability to reason about one's own knowledge would not. The authors gave children three standard false-belief tasks and participated in a within-subjects balloon inflation task that they performed both individually and as part of a group. Results indicated that 3-year-olds performed significantly below older preschoolers on mental-state reasoning tasks. Only 4- and 5-year-olds displayed diminished individual effort. Multiple regression analysis indicated that only the ability to reason about others' false beliefs accounted for a significant amount of variance in social loafing; age (in months) and own false-belief reasoning did not. The authors discussed theoretical and pedagogical implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The primary aim of this study was to compare the neural substrates of decision-making in middle-aged children and adults. To this end, we collected fMRI data while 9–12-year-olds and 18–26-year-olds performed a simple gambling task. The task was designed to tap two important aspects of decision-making: risk estimation and feedback processing. We examined how orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) contributed to risk estimation, and how ventrolateral and medial prefrontal cortices (VLPFC and medial PFC) contributed to negative feedback processing in children and adults. Region of interest analyses revealed differences in brain activation between children and adults for ACC and lateral OFC. ACC was recruited more for high-risk than for low-risk trials, and this difference was larger for children than for adults. In contrast, children and adults did not differ in activation for OFC or DLPFC. These data suggest that children''s decision-making under uncertainty is associated with a high degree of response conflict. Both age groups exhibited bilateral VLPFC (BA 47) and medial PFC/ACC (BA 6/ BA 32 (dorsal) and 24 (ventral)) activation associated with negative feedback processing. Relative to adults, children engaged lateral OFC more strongly for negative relative to positive feedback. These results indicate that children may find negative feedback more aversive than adults do. In summary, children aged 9–12 years and adults recruit similar brain regions during risk-estimation and feedback processing, but some key differences between the groups provide insight into the factors contributing to developmental changes in decision-making. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Predictions concerning development, interrelations, and possible independence of working memory, inhibition, and cognitive flexibility were tested in 325 participants (roughly 30 per age from 4 to 13 years and young adults; 50% female). All were tested on the same computerized battery, designed to manipulate memory and inhibition independently and together, in steady state (single-task blocks) and during task-switching, and to be appropriate over the lifespan and for neuroimaging (fMRI). This is one of the first studies, in children or adults, to explore: (a) how memory requirements interact with spatial compatibility and (b) spatial incompatibility effects both with stimulus-specific rules (Simon task) and with higher-level, conceptual rules. Even the youngest children could hold information in mind, inhibit a dominant response, and combine those as long as the inhibition required was steady-state and the rules remained constant. Cognitive flexibility (switching between rules), even with memory demands minimized, showed a longer developmental progression, with 13-year-olds still not at adult levels. Effects elicited only in Mixed blocks with adults were found in young children even in single-task blocks; while young children could exercise inhibition in steady state it exacted a cost not seen in adults, who (unlike young children) seemed to re-set their default response when inhibition of the same tendency was required throughout a block. The costs associated with manipulations of inhibition were greater in young children while the costs associated with increasing memory demands were greater in adults. Effects seen only in RT in adults were seen primarily in accuracy in young children. Adults slowed down on difficult trials to preserve accuracy; but the youngest children were impulsive; their RT remained more constant but at an accuracy cost on difficult trials. Contrary to our predictions of independence between memory and inhibition, when matched for difficulty RT correlations between these were as high as 0.8, although accuracy correlations were less than half that. Spatial incompatibility effects and global and local switch costs were evident in children and adults, differing only in size. Other effects (e.g., asymmetric switch costs and the interaction of switching rules and switching response-sites) differed fundamentally over age. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The CHORES (Children Helping Out: Responsibilities, Expectations, and Supports) is a clinical and research tool that measures school-aged children's participation in household tasks. Separate performance and assistance scores enable examination of changes in children's responsibilities for household tasks as they mature and the work of families to promote their participation. The Self-Care and Family-Care subscales afford study of cultural aspects of household tasks that may influence children's participation and opportunities for learning. Thirty-two parents from diverse backgrounds participated in the first part of the study. Twenty-one of these parents participated in the test-retest study. The sample was culturally diverse and included parents of 6- to 11-year-old children with and without disabilities who have average or above intellect. Results from the psychometric analyses show that the CHORES has strong reliability and validity. The variance in children's task performance and overall levels of assistance supports the utility of this measure for capturing differences among children in the extent of their participation. Stability of parents' responses over time is strong both for performance (ICC, r =0.88) and for assistance (ICC, r =0.92) scores. The validity of the CHORES is supported by the parents' judgments of the importance of involving their children in household tasks. The CHORES is easy to complete, considers the parent's perspective, and provides a way to collect information on children's participation in household tasks. The CHORES provides a mechanism to learn more about factors that influence children's participation in household tasks, changes in their responsibilities over time, and outcomes from their participation in these tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of the present study was to compare the use of the preferred versus the nonpreferred hand in children performing two tasks of different levels of complexity, in various positions in space. Right-handed and left-handed consistent children were compared to their inconsistent counterparts. The results showed that the general tendency to use one's preferred hand to grasp an object is more or less pronounced depending on the object's spatial location and the task's complexity. The children used their preferred hand more often even when the object was presented contralaterally, and did so to a greater extent during the more complex task. Inconsistent-handers were more likely to shift to using their nonpreferred hand when the object was presented to this hand's side. Finally, we found that the influence of handedness consistency on hand use for the spatial positions varied with the complexity of the task. These results favor a view of handedness as a dynamic process in which motor preferences interact with task demand, probably through task-related attention. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Dev Psychobiol 45:51-58, 2004. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous studies report that poor readers display low performance in naming tasks. However, very few studies have investigated the development of naming skills along with the development of reading fluency and its variability in typically developing children. In this study, we used electro-encephalographic (EEG) recordings acquired during letter and picture naming tasks to investigate how naming skills develop and, possibly, interact with age and reading level variations. Ninety-three children aged 7–12 years named letters and pictures under an EEG recording, and their reading performance was assessed. ERP results on amplitudes show that age and reading level have similar effects on the entire letter naming time-course. By contrast, age and reading level have different effects on the picture naming time-course, with a specific effect of reading level on the N1 time-interval, associated with visuo-conceptual processing and an effect of both age and reading on later time-windows. On the microstate analysis, age remains the only predictor of the variance in global electric field at scalp for both letter and picture naming indicating that reading skill is not related to a modulation of the mental processes underlying naming. • The entire time course of letter naming is modulated by both age and reading level. • N1 in Picture naming is specifically related to reading level. • N1 in picture naming might reflect the activation of the VWFA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Age is associated with children's cognitive-motor dual tasking. • Older children walk more regularly in dual-task situations than younger children. • Children's accuracy in solving the dual tasks was differently related to age. • Age effects were found for updating and switching but not for inhibitory control. • Dual tasking is related to several individual variables (e.g., intelligence). Children coordinate two tasks simultaneously at several occasions throughout the day; however, this dual-task ability and its development across childhood are poorly understood. Therefore, the current study investigated age-related changes in children's dual-task ability using a large cross-sectional sample of 8- to 13-year-old children (N = 135). In our dual-task methodology, children were asked to walk across an electronic pathway while performing three concurrent cognitive tasks. These tasks targeted at children's executive function components: inhibition, switching, and updating skills. Our findings indicate associations between age and children's stride time variability but not with normalized velocity. Younger children showed higher stride time variability in the dual-task situation as compared with older children after accounting for their single-task performance, intelligence, anthropometric variables, and sex, indicating a more regular gait pattern in older children. Furthermore, age was differently related to children's accuracy in solving the concurrent cognitive tasks. Whereas age was associated with children's performance in the updating and switching task, there was no relation between age and children's inhibitory skills. In addition, our data imply that children's dual-task ability was associated with a number of individual variables. In particular, children with higher intelligence scores showed fewer errors and girls showed lower stride time variability in the dual tasks. Our results suggest a considerable developmental progression in children's ability to coordinate two simultaneous tasks across middle childhood. Furthermore, our study qualifies previous dual-task research and implies that heterogeneous findings may be related to a differential involvement of executive function components in the dual task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Age-related progress on all prospective memory (PM) tasks in 6–10-year-olds. • Task requirements account for variations in children's PM. • Updating and inhibition account for age-related progress in event-based PM. • Time-based PM success is reliant on specific time-monitoring abilities. • Future thinking does not predict PM when accounting for age/other cognitive resources. Recent research indicates that schoolchildren's prospective memory (PM) success and age-related improvements vary as a function of the cognitive resources employed by different PM task requirements. In a sample of eighty-two 6- to 10-year-olds, we aimed to investigate age-related differences in PM, looking for specific contributions from executive functions (updating, inhibition, shifting) and episodic future thinking (EFT). A second aim was to investigate whether these contributions vary as a function of PM type (event- or time-based), while also exploring their convergence across tasks measuring the same PM abilities. Age-related improvements were found across all task versions. However, on PM tasks requiring more self-initiation processes and strategic monitoring, age-related progress was accounted for by children's executive resources (updating, inhibition) and/or specific time-monitoring abilities. Although associated with PM scores on the same type of tasks, EFT did not predict children's PM when accounting for age and/or other cognitive processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study was conducted to examine behaviors reflecting attention among learning handicapped and normal youngsters while they worked on tasks that varied in cognitive demand. Children were individually observed while they worked in their classroom. Results indicated that normal youngsters spent about 80% of observed time on-task regardless of task demands. Learning handicapped youngsters varied in their on-task behavior as a function of task demand: They spent least time on-task when cognitive, demands were greatest and most time on-task when few cognitive demands were made. Implications of these findings were discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A series of studies was conducted to examine the development of self-evaluation in children aged 1-5 years. Developmental changes in children's reactions to achievement-related outcomes were assessed in a variety of contexts, using different tasks and different criteria for success. The first study of l-3-year-olds revealed an increased social orientation after the age of 21 months. Only children over this age were more likely to look up at the experimenter after they had produced an outcome themselves than after the same outcome had been produced by the experimenter. These older children were also more likely than younger children to call their mothers' attention to their achievements in a free-play situation. In a second study, on a task with visibly salient success versus failure outcomes, children aged 2-5 years responded to success with positive affect (e.g., smiling) and to failure with avoidance reactions (e.g., looking away from the experimenter). Praise enhanced children's positive affective reactions to success, but its effect was modest. In the final study, winning or losing on a competitive task was not understood by children below age 33 months and had no effect on their affective reactions to the task. In contrast, winning enhanced older children's pleasure in completing the task. Three stages are proposed in the development of self-evaluation. In the first stage, children experience joy in causality, but they lack the cognitive representational skills required for self-evaluation in a self-reflective sense, and they do not anticipate others' reactions to their performance. In the second stage, beginning before the age of 2 years, children anticipate adult reactions, seeking positive reactions to their successes and endeavoring to avoid negative reactions to failure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

30 4-5-year-old children copied a horizontal line, a vertical line, and an inverted T. Preference for a certain strategy in copying the compound figure was interpreted in terms of a simple phrase structure, one involving movements controlled with minima] degrees of freedom. Considerations of the total utterance in terms of semantics and phrase structure are necessary to account for copying patterns. In a second experiment, 163 children from kindergarten through sixth grade were given the inverted-T copying task. With increased age, children come to prefer increasingly complex combinational structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cardinal-ordinal abilities and attentional preferences of kindergarten nonconservers, kindergarten conservers, and third-grade conservers of number were compared by employing standardized version s of Piagetian cardinal-ordinal tasks and a triad preference task on which Ss were asked which 2 of 3 rows of poker chips were "the same." The triad contained arrays which were each alike on 1 stimulus dimension (e.g., number) and different on the other 2 dimensions (e.g., length and density). Kindergarten conservers preferred the dimension of number significantly more often on the preference task, had number more readily available on probe trials of the preference task, and performed significantly better on cardinal-ordinal tasks than did nonconservers. Third-grade conservers preferred the dimension of number significantly more often on the preference task, had number and density more available on probe trials, and performed significantly better on a cardinal-ordinal task that called for operational understanding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article determines the gender role differences between adults in two-parent, two-earner families, their children and children from single-parent families in time spent on household work. Of primary importance was the finding that family type made a difference in the degree to which household tasks were shared by family members. Boys in single-parent families shared the household work role less than did boys in two-parent families. This finding was unexpected and several interpretations are possible for explaining why boys in single-parent families were more traditional in their sex role behavior in the performance of household work than were boys in two-parent families. First, the homemaker may have avoided stress by assigning tasks to the most compliant child, and girls are known to be more compliant than boys. Another possibility is that the female single-parent may have reinforced the traditional male role to avoid over feminizing her male child in the absence of a resident male model.

Specialized AD/HD coaching can be a helpful service for families and children. Coaching can help children and teens with numerous important yet challenging tasks, such as improving focus, staying on task, managing time, developing organizational skills, strengthening motivation, building self-awareness and confidence, and developing structures and routines to promote success. Readiness for AD/HD coaching is individual and depends on understanding cause and effect. AD/HD coaches work with parents of very young children, with parents and children in the pre-teen years, and directly with teen clients. AD/HD coaching for children and teens can lead to improved family life, better success in school, and optimum readiness for adult life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Children received different types of initial experience with a causal trap-task. • From age 3, generating one's own experience led to above-chance performance. • If the same experience was given through demonstration, performance was at chance. • Using a tool was associated with more perseveration than using one's hands. Children often learn from others' demonstrations, but in the causal domain evidence acquired from observing others may be more ambiguous than evidence generated for oneself. Prior work involving tool-using tasks suggests that observational learning might not provide sufficient information about the causal relations involved, but it remains unclear whether these limitations can be mitigated by providing demonstrations using familiar manual actions rather than unfamiliar tools. We provided 2.5- to 3.5-year-old children (N = 67) with the opportunity to acquire experience with a causal trap task by hand or by tool actively or from observing others. Initially, children either generated their own experience or watched a yoked demonstration; all children then attempted the trap task with the tool. Children who generated their own experience outperformed those who watched the demonstration. Hand or tool use had no effect on performance with a tool. The implications of these findings for scaffolding self-guided learning and for demonstrations involving errors are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neuroimaging studies typically focus on either resting state or task-based fMRI data. Prior research has shown that similarity in functional connectivity between rest and cognitive tasks, interpreted as reconfiguration efficiency, is related to task performance and IQ. Here, we extend this approach from adults to children, and from cognitive tasks to a threat-based attention task. The goal of the current study was to examine whether similarity in functional connectivity during rest and an attention bias task relates to threat bias, IQ, anxiety symptoms, and social reticence. fMRI was measured during resting state and during the dot-probe task in 41 children (M = 13.44, SD = 0.70). Functional connectivity during rest and dot-probe was positively correlated, suggesting that functional hierarchies in the brain are stable. Similarity in functional connectivity between rest and the dot-probe task only related to threat bias (p uncorr <.03). This effect did not survive correction for multiple testing. Overall, children who allocate more attention towards threat also may possess greater reconfiguration efficiency in switching from intrinsic to threat-related attention states. Finally, functional connectivity correlated negatively across the two conditions of the dot-probe task. Opposing patterns of modulation of functional connectivity by threat-congruent and threat-incongruent trials may reflect task-specific network changes during two different attentional processes. •Similarity in functional connectivity during rest and a dot-probe task was assessed. •Functional connectivity during rest and dot-probe was positively correlated. •Similarity in functional connectivity between rest and task related to threat bias. •This might suggest that reconfiguration efficiency related to bias towards threat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]