Early executive function skills reliably predict school readiness and future academic success. While children’s skills undergo rapid development during the transition to formal schooling, it remains unclear the extent to which schooling exerts a unique influence on the accelerated development of EF and academic skills during the early years of schooling. In the present study, a quasi-experimental technique known as the school cutoff design was used to examine whether same-aged children who made vs. missed the age cutoff for school entry (...) significantly differed on EF, reading, and math outcomes. Data from 166 pre-k, kindergarten, and first grade children from a longitudinal study of literacy development were analyzed. Children were assessed on EF, reading, and math skills in fall and spring. Results revealed unique effects of kindergarten, but not first grade, on growth in EF and reading over and above the effect of age. Schooling was unrelated to growth in math. Because kindergarten represents the first year of elementary school and children’s first exposure to a formal schooling environment, kindergarten schooling may be uniquely positioned to produce greater gains in academic and behavioral outcomes compared to other grades. (shrink)

Individual differences in phonological processing abilities have often been attributed to perceptual factors, rather than to factors relating to learning and memory. Here, we consider the contribution of individual differences in declarative and procedural memory to phonological processing performance in adulthood. We examined the phonological processing, declarative memory, and procedural memory abilities of 79 native English-speaking young adults with typical language and reading abilities. Declarative memory was assessed with a recognition memory task of real and made-up objects. Procedural memory was (...) assessed with a serial reaction time task. For both tasks, learning was assessed shortly after encoding, and again after a 12-h, overnight delay. We regressed phonological processing ability with memory performance on both days. We found that declarative memory, but not procedural memory, was highly predictive of phonological processing abilities. Specifically, declarative memory scores obtained shortly after learning were associated with non-word repetition performance, whereas declarative memory scores obtained after the overnight delay were associated with phonological awareness. Procedural memory was not associated with either of the phonological processing measures. We discuss these findings in the context of adult participants with mature phonological systems. We examine possible implications for the relationship between declarative memory and phonological processing in adulthood. (shrink)

Despite the relative stability of personality, multiple studies were able to show that personality develops across the whole life span with unique developmental patterns occurring in the time of emerging adulthood. Rank-order consistency has been shown to increase substantially, mean-level changes in the direction of the maturity principle (i.e., increases in emotional stability, agreeableness, and conscientiousness) have been repeatedly demonstrated, and interindividual differences in change were shown to be most pronounced. Aiming to explain these findings, social relationships and work haven (...) been shown to be important environmental contexts for personality development. However, some questions have remained open. First, little has been understood about the personality development of emerging adults undergoing a different educational pathway than college education. Therefore, study 1 investigated personality development in emerging adults undergoing 3-year vocational education and training. The study showed the young apprentices to develop counter the maturity principle. Second, innovative theoretical and methodological approaches to more adequately model dynamic transactionism theory in personality-social relationship transactions have been suggested to overcome the imbalance of effects. Thus, study 2 investigated personality-relationship transactions in a major life transition from high school to post-secondary education and beyond. However, the dominance of personality effects on subsequent social relationship development was reinforced for emerging adulthood. Third, following the ongoing debate on possibilities to psychologically assess environmental contexts, study 3 tested multiple hypotheses on the interplay between the importance ascribed to basic psychological need support (BPN), perceived BPN support, and personality development. The findings revealed the individual’s importance ascribed to BPN to primarily important for personality development. (shrink)