A study was conducted in which 133 participants performed 11 memory tasks (some thought to reflect working memory and some thought to reflect short-term memory), 2 tests of general fluid intelligence, and the Verbal and Quantitative Scholastic Aptitude Tests. Structural equation modeling suggested that short-term and working memories reflect separate but highly related constructs and that many of the tasks used in the literature as working memory tasks reflect a common construct. Working memory shows a strong connection to fluid intelligence, but short-term memory does not. A theory of working memory capacity and general fluid intelligence is proposed: The authors argue that working memory capacity and fluid intelligence reflect the ability to keep a representation active, particularly in the face of interference and distraction. The authors also discuss the relationship of this capability to controlled attention, and the functions of the prefrontal cortex.

Working memory,short-term memory, and general fluid intellegence : A latent-variable approach

Working memory, short-term memory, and general fluid intelligence: A latent-variable approach.

The effects of neighborhood characteristics on the development of children and adolescents are estimated, using two data sets, each of which contains information gathered about individual children and the families and neighborhoods in which they reside. There are reasonably powerful neighborhood effects-particularly effects of the presence of affluent neighbors-on Childhood IQ, teenage births, and school-leaving, even after the differences in the socioeconomic characteristics of families are adjusted for. The study finds that white teenagers benefit more from the presence of affluent neighbors than do black teenagers.

Do Neighborhoods Influence Child and Adolescent Development

Results from a longitudinal correlational study of 244 children from kindergarten through 2nd grade indicate that young children's phonological processing abilities are well-described by 5 correlated latent abilities: phonological analysis, phonological synthesis, phonological coding in working memory, isolated naming, and serial naming. These abilities are characterized by different developmental rates and remarkably stable individual differences. Decoding did not exert a causal influence on subsequent phonological processing abilities, but letter-name knowledge did. Causal relations between phonological processing abilities and reading-related knowledge are bidirectional: Phonological processing abilities exert strong causal influences on word decoding; letter-name knowledge exerts a more modest causal influence on subsequent phonological processing abilities. In the context of beginning reading, phonological processing refers to making use of the phonological or sound structure of oral language when learning how to decode written language (see Adams, 1990; Brady & Shankweiler, 1991; Crowder &

Development of Reading-Related Phonological Processing Abilities: New Evidence of Bidirectional Causality from a Latent Variable Longitudinal Study.

Breast-feeding and cognitive development: a meta-analysis.

Course Description Child Assessment serves as an introductory graduate course to the principles and theories of the assessment of children. Throughout the semester you will be exposed to numerous theories of assessment and domains of assessment. Additionally, you will develop basic competency in many of these areas through experiential tasks (e.g., administering and scoring an intelligence test). There is no widely accepted “right” assessment; however, there are better and worse assessments for individuals and problems. At the end of the course, you should be prepared to continue honing your assessment skills in future iterations of your training. Please note that this syllabus is a tentative schedule of the course and may change as the semester progresses.

Jerome M. Sattler

Papers

Assessment of Children