Although there is evidence that young children's inhibitory control (IC) is related to their academic skills, the nature of this relation and the role of potential moderators of it are not well ...understood. In this meta-analytic study, we summarized results from 75 peer-reviewed studies of preschool and kindergarten children (14,424 children; 32-80 months old M = 54.71 months; SD = 9.70) across a wide range of socioeconomic status. The mean effect size (r) across studies was .27 (95% confidence interval .24, .29), indicating a moderate and statistically significant association between self-regulation and academic skills. The association between IC and academic skills was moderated by type of IC behavior task (i.e., hot vs. cool behavior task), by method of assessing IC (i.e., behavior task vs. parent report), and by academic subject (i.e., literacy vs. math), but not by other methods of assessing IC (i.e., behavior task vs. teacher report, parent report vs. teacher report) or by grade (i.e., preschool vs. kindergarten). The results of this meta-analysis suggest that there are preferred methods for assessing IC (i.e., cool behavior tasks, teacher reports) that should be considered when examining the relations between IC and academic skills in young children.
Learning Analytics and Multimodal Learning Analytics are changing the way of analysing the learning process while students interact with an educational content. This paper presents a systematic ...literature review aimed at describing practices in recent Multimodal Learning Analytics and Learning Analytics research literature in order to identify tools and strategies useful for the assessment of the progress and behaviour of children under 6 years old in respect of their learning. The purpose is to provide guidance for Multimodal Learning Analytics research with children under 6 years old to assess their engagement in a task, their emotions, attention, understanding and achievement of a goal. The current state of knowledge on Multimodal Learning Analytics research suggests how performance analytics, face and speech recognition systems, eye tracking, Kinect analytics and wristbands could be used with children. The results show the complexity of collecting data using non‐invasive methodologies with children under 6 years old. Ethical implications related to multimodal data from audio, visual, biometric and quantitative measures of child behaviour are discussed.
Significant differences in language and self-regulation skills exist among children when they enter formal schooling. Contributing to these language differences is a growing population of dual ...language learners (DLLs) in the United States. Given evidence linking self-regulatory processes and language development, this study explored bidirectional associations between English expressive vocabulary and self-regulation skills for monolingual English and DLL preschool children (N = 250) from mixed-income families in Los Angeles. Across three time points, findings provide initial support for bidirectionality between these developing skills for both monolinguals and DLLs. Results provide strong empirical support for vocabulary serving as a leading indicator of self-regulation skills in preschool. Findings also suggest that early self-regulation skills play a particularly important role for vocabulary development.
Based on theoretically driven models, the Chicago School Readiness Project (CSRP) targeted low-income children's school readiness through the mediating mechanism of self-regulation. The CSRP is a ...multicomponent, cluster-randomized efficacy trial implemented in 35 Head Start-funded classrooms (N = 602 children). The analyses confirm that the CSRP improved low-income children's self-regulation skills (as indexed by attention/impulse control and executive function) from fall to spring of the Head Start year. Analyses also suggest significant benefits of CSRP for children's preacademic skills, as measured by vocabulary, letter-naming, and math skills. Partial support was found for improvement in children's self-regulation as a hypothesized mediator for children's gains in academic readiness. Implications for programs and policies that support young children's behavioral health and academic success are discussed.
Indirect effects of preschool classroom indexes of teacher talk were tested on fourth-grade outcomes for 57 students from low-income families in a longitudinal study of classroom and home influences ...on reading. Detailed observations and audiotaped teacher and child language data were coded to measure content and quantity of verbal interactions in preschool classrooms. Preschool teachers' use of sophisticated vocabulary during free play predicted fourth-grade reading comprehension and word recognition (mean age = 9; 7), with effects mediated by kindergarten child language measures (mean age = 5; 6). In large group preschool settings, teachers' attention-getting utterances were directly related to later comprehension. Preschool teachers' correcting utterances and analytic talk about books, and early support in the home for literacy predicted fourth-grade vocabulary, as mediated by kindergarten receptive vocabulary.
Impairments in executive function have been documented in school-age children with mathematical learning difficulties. However, the utility and specificity of preschool executive function abilities ...in predicting later mathematical achievement are poorly understood. This study examined linkages between children's developing executive function abilities at age 4 and children's subsequent achievement in mathematics at age 6, 1 year after school entry. The study sample consisted of a regionally representative cohort of 104 children followed prospectively from ages 2 to 6 years. At age 4, children completed a battery of executive function tasks that assessed planning, set shifting, and inhibitory control. Teachers completed the preschool version of the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function. Clinical and classroom measures of children's mathematical achievement were collected at age 6. Results showed that children's performance on set shifting, inhibitory control, and general executive behavior measures during the preschool period accounted for substantial variability in children's early mathematical achievement at school. These associations persisted even after individual differences in general cognitive ability and reading achievement were taken into account. Findings suggest that early measures of executive function may be useful in identifying children who may experience difficulties learning mathematical skills and concepts. They also suggest that the scaffolding of these executive skills could potentially be a useful additional component in early mathematics education.
This study aims to provide a bibliometric mapping analysis of the studies on foreign language teaching in early childhood education in Web of Science. A total of 638 studies were reached however 596 ...studies were selected for the analysis. For bibliometric analysis, VOSViewer programme was used in order to reveal the most used keywords, words in the abstracts, citation analyses and co-citation analyses in the studies. In addition, whether any technology was adopted in the studies was examined within 76 studies. The results showed that the most used keywords were English language learning, bilingualism, English as a second language, and English learners. The most used words in the abstracts were teacher, acquisition and effect. Bialystok and Cummins, are the most cited authors in this field. The most cited journals are Journal of Educational Psychology and Applied Psycholinguistics. The studies have been mostly published in Spain, Sweden, and Israel. In addition, it is observed that the studies started in 2012 mainly in the United States, Canada, England and Germany. When technology use in the studies was examined, ICT in education, multimedia, digital technologies, instructional technology, technology integration were used in the studies. This study provides a guide for new studies, to identify the trends in the field and to compare the existing research on the topic. Consequently, it is suggested that future researches need focusing more on the pedagogical aspects and testing whether teaching environments supported by new technologies contribute to foreign language education.
This study examined the role of self-regulation in emerging academic ability in one hundred and forty-one 3- to 5-year-old children from low-income homes. Measures of effortful control, false belief ...understanding, and the inhibitory control and attention-shifting aspects of executive function in preschool were related to measures of math and literacy ability in kindergarten. Results indicated that the various aspects of child self-regulation accounted for unique variance in the academic outcomes independent of general intelligence and that the inhibitory control aspect of executive function was a prominent correlate of both early math and reading ability. Findings suggest that curricula designed to improve self-regulation skills as well as enhance early academic abilities may be most effective in helping children succeed in school.
This study investigated the prospective links between sleep in infancy and preschoolers' cognitive performance. Mothers of 65 infants completed a sleep diary when infants were aged 1 year, and ...children completed two subscales of the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence at 4 years, indexing general cognitive ability and complex executive functioning. Consistent with hypotheses, children getting higher proportions of their sleep at night as infants were found to perform better on executive functions, but did not show better general cognition. Relations held after controlling for family socioeconomic status and prior cognitive functioning. These findings suggest that the special importance of sleep for higher order cognition, documented among adults, may appear very early in life.
In this study, we examined the longitudinal relations between frequency and features of reading experiences within the preschool classroom to children's language and literacy outcomes in kindergarten ...and 1st grade. "Frequency" refers to the number of shared reading sessions conducted each week as measured by teachers' written reading logs recorded across the academic year. "Features" refers to teachers' extratextual talk about literal, inferential, or print or phonological topics as assessed by analysis of 6 videotaped readings of narrative and informational texts collected across the preschool year. Participants were 28 preschool teachers and 178 children. The children were largely at risk and randomly selected from among those in each classroom to complete longitudinal assessments. In preschool, results showed that the frequency of classroom shared reading was positively and significantly related to children's receptive vocabulary growth, as was the inclusion of extratextual conversations around the text; only extratextual conversations related to children's preschool literacy growth. There was no evidence of differential influences of these experiences for children; that is, the relationship between frequency or features and children's language and literacy development was not moderated by children's initial skill level. Longitudinally, extratextual talk during preschool shared reading remained associated with children's vocabulary skills through kindergarten, with trends toward significance extending to 1st grade literacy skills. The frequency of preschool shared reading was not a significant predictor of longitudinal outcomes.
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