The role of academic self-concepts, parent expectations and teacher-student interactions in socio-economic gaps in educational attainment.

Background: Low socio-economic status (SES) is a persistent risk factor for educational attainment. Parent expectations and student's academic self-concepts contribute to this link; however, few studies have examined how changes in these constructs over time contribute to SES gaps in attainment and how teachers may buffer against the consequences of these changes.

Aims: We examine SES differences in (a) changes in parent expectations and academic self-concepts from primary to secondary school and (b) interactions between teacher-student interaction quality and parent expectations to uncover the role these processes play in SES differences in attainment.

Links Between Child Executive Function and Adjustment: A Three-Site Study.

Cross-site comparisons indicate that East Asian children typically excel on tests of executive function (EF), but interpreting this contrast is made difficult by both the heavy reliance on testing in school settings and by the scarcity of studies that assess across-site measurement invariance. Addressing these gaps, our study included remote home-based assessments of EF for 1002 children (M = 5.19 years, SD = 0.

Changes in children's well-being and mental health across the early school years: Links with academic and social competence.

The aim of the present study was to examine the relation between children's well-being and mental health in the early years of primary school and the developmental association between well-being and mental health and children's early social and academic skills. Two hundred fifty-two children (131 girls, = 5.40 years, 80% White) and their caregivers (89.

Developmental links between well-being, self-concept and prosocial behaviour in early primary school.

Background: Well-being is a key aspect of children's education, yet measurement issues have limited studies in early primary school.

Aims: The current 12-month longitudinal study assesses the temporal stability of child- and parent-reported school well-being and examines developmental links with academic self-concept and parent-rated prosocial behaviour.

Sample(s): We tracked a sample of 206 children across the transition from the first (T1) to the second (T2) year of primary school (T1 child M = 5.

Building Numeracy Skills: Associations between DUPLO Block Construction and Numeracy in Early Childhood.

Research shows that children's block construction skills are positively associated with their concurrent and later mathematics performance. Furthermore, there is evidence that block construction training is particularly beneficial for improving early mathematics skills in children from low-Socio Economic Status (SES) groups who are known to have lower maths performance than their peers. The current study investigates (a) the association between block construction and mathematics in children just before the start of formal schooling (4 years-of-age in the UK) and (b) whether the association between block construction and mathematics differs between children from more compared to less affluent families.

Model-Based Planning Deficits in Compulsivity Are Linked to Faulty Neural Representations of Task Structure.

Compulsive individuals have deficits in model-based planning, but the mechanisms that drive this have not been established. We examined two candidates-that compulsivity is linked to (1) an impaired model of the task environment and/or (2) an inability to engage cognitive control when making choices. To test this, 192 participants performed a two-step reinforcement learning task with concurrent EEG recordings, and we related the neural and behavioral data to their scores on a self-reported transdiagnostic dimension of compulsivity.