Blocking in children's causal learning depends on working memory and reasoning abilities.

A sample of 99 children completed a causal learning task that was an analogue of the food allergy paradigm used with adults. The cue competition effects of blocking and unovershadowing were assessed under forward and backward presentation conditions. Children also answered questions probing their ability to make the inference posited to be necessary for blocking by a reasoning account of cue competition. For the first time, children's working memory and general verbal ability were also measured alongside their causal learning. The magnitude of blocking and unovershadowing effects increased with age. However, analyses showed that the best predictor of both blocking and unovershadowing effects was children's performance on the reasoning questions. The magnitude of the blocking effect was also predicted by children's working memory abilities. These findings provide new evidence that cue competition effects such as blocking are underpinned by effortful reasoning processes. 

Methodological issues for qualitative research with learning disabled children

This paper discusses key methodological issues for qualitative research with learning disabled children, based on the author's experience of involving learning disabled children in her doctoral study. The study was founded on the social model of disability and a sociological understanding of childhood that recognizes the abilities of disabled children as competent research participants. Issues that arose throughout the research process, from the early stages of gaining access to children, to communication challenges for interviewing learning disabled children, and the analysis and dissemination of data, are discussed. Within this context, this paper explores key methodological issues for researchers with regard to interviewing learning disabled children and actively involving them in qualitative research.

Reliability and Validity of the Child Health QuestionnairePF-50 for European Children with Cerebral Palsy

Objective: To evaluate the psychometric performance of the Child Health Questionnaire (CHQ) in children with cerebral palsy (CP).
Method: 818 parents of children with CP, aged 8–12 from nine regions of Europe completed the CHQ (parent form 50 items). Functional abilities were classified using the five-level Gross Motor Function Classification Scheme (Levels I–III as ambulant; Level IV–V as nonambulant CP).
Results: Ceiling effects were observed for a number of subscales and summary scores across all Gross Motor Function Classification System levels, whilst floor effects occurred only in the physical functioning scale (Level V CP). Reliability was satisfactory overall. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) revealed a seven-factor structure for the total sample of children with CP but with different factor structures for ambulant and nonambulant children.
Conclusion: The CHQ has limited applicability in children with CP, although with judicious use of certain domains for ambulant and nonambulant children can provide useful and comparable data about child health status for descriptive purposes.

Participation of 8-12 year old children with cerebral palsy: a cross-sectional European Survey

Objectives
To evaluate how involvement in life situations (participation) in children with cerebral palsy varies with type and severity of impairment and to investigate geographical variation in participation.

Design
Cross sectional study. Trained interviewers visited parents of children with cerebral palsy; multilevel multivariable regression related participation to impairments, pain, and sociodemographic characteristics.

Setting
Eight European regions with population registers of children with cerebral palsy; one further region recruited children from multiple sources.

Participants
1174 children aged 8-12 with cerebral palsy randomly selected from the population registers, 743 (63%) joined in the study; the further region recruited 75 children.

Main outcome measure
Children’s participation assessed by the Life-H questionnaire covering 10 main areas of daily life. Scoring ignored adaptations or assistance required for participation.

Results
Children with pain and those with more severely impaired walking, fine motor skills, communication, and intellectual abilities had lower participation across most domains. Type of cerebral palsy and problems with feeding and vision were associated with lower participation for specific domains, but the sociodemographic factors examined were not. Impairment and pain accounted for up to a sixth of the variation in participation. Participation on all domains varied substantially between regions: children in east Denmark had consistently higher participation than children in other regions. For most participation domains, about a third of the unexplained variation could be ascribed to variation between regions and about two thirds to variation between individuals.

Conclusions
Participation in children with cerebral palsy should be assessed in clinical practice to guide intervention and assess its effect. Pain should be carefully assessed. Some European countries facilitate participation better than others, implying some countries could make better provision. Legislation and regulation should be directed to ensuring this happens.

Planning in young children: A review and synthesis

Research on the development of planning is reviewed in the context of a framework that considers the role of three types of cognitive flexibility in planning development: event-independent temporal representation, executive function, and self-projection. It is argued that the emergence of planning abilities in the preschool period is dependent upon the development of event-independent temporal representation. Research on the development of executive function suggests that its sub-components, in particular inhibitory control, may be linked to developmental improvements on planning tasks. Recently, new paradigms have established that self-projection to the future appears to develop over the preschool period. We consider how these different forms of cognitive flexibility may themselves be related in development. (C) 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The link between logic, mathematics and imagination: evidence from children with developmental dyscalculia and mathematically gifted children

This study examined performance on transitive inference problems in children with developmental dyscalculia (DD), typically developing controls matched on IQ, working memory and reading skills, and in children with outstanding mathematical abilities. Whereas mainstream approaches currently consider DD as a domain-specific deficit, we hypothesized that the development of mathematical skills is closely related to the development of logical abilities, a domain-general skill. In particular, we expected a close link between mathematical skills and the ability to reason independently of one's beliefs. Our results showed that this was indeed the case, with children with DD performing more poorly than controls, and high maths ability children showing outstanding skills in logical reasoning about belief-laden problems. Nevertheless, all groups performed poorly on structurally equivalent problems with belief-neutral content. This is in line with suggestions that abstract reasoning skills (i.e. the ability to reason about content without real-life referents) develops later than the ability to reason about belief-inconsistent fantasy content.A video abstract of this article can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90DWY3O4xx8.

Phonic skills mediate improved literacy outcomes in at-risk primary school children: results from the Ready-to-Learn Programme

Background
Learning to read is a key goal during primary school: reading difficulties may curtail children’s learning trajectories. Controversy remains regarding what types of interventions are effective for children at risk for academic failure, such as children in disadvantaged areas. We present data from a complex intervention to test the hypothesis that phonic skills and word recognition abilities are a pivotal and specific causal mechanism for the development of reading skills in children at risk for poorer literacy outcomes.
Method
Over 500 pupils across 16 primary schools took part in a Cluster Randomised Controlled Trial from school year 1 to year 3. Schools were randomly allocated to the intervention or the control arm. The intervention involved a literacy-rich after-school programme. Children attending schools in the control arm of the study received the curriculum normally provided. Children in both arms completed batteries of language, phonic skills, and reading tests every year. We used multilevel mediation models to investigate mediating processes between intervention and outcomes.
Findings
Children who took part in the intervention displayed improvements in reading skills compared to those in the control arm. Results indicated a significant indirect effect of the intervention via phonics encoding.
Discussion
The results suggest that the intervention was effective in improving reading abilities of children at risk, and this effect was mediated by improving children’s phonic skills. This has relevance for designing interventions aimed at improving literacy skills of children exposed to socio-economic disadvantage. Results also highlight the importance of methods to investigate causal pathways from intervention to outcomes.