Associations among Family Environment, Attention, and School Readiness for At-Risk Children

This study examined the developmental pathways from children’s family environment to school readiness within an at-risk sample (N = 1,701). Measures of the family environment (maternal parenting behaviors and maternal mental health) across early childhood were related to children’s observed sustained attention as well as to academic and behavioral outcomes at age 5 years. Results suggest specificity in the associations among attention and its correlates. Maternal parenting behaviors but not mental health explained individual differences in sustained attention, which in turn were associated with variability in children’s academic school readiness. Mediation tests confirmed that sustained attention partially accounted for the link between parenting behaviors and academic school readiness. While maternal mental health was associated with children’s behavioral school readiness, sustained attention did not play a mediating role. Findings indicate sustained attention as a potential target for efforts aimed at enhancing academic school readiness among predominantly poor and minority children.child development, educational success, parenting behaviors, school readiness, mental health

ATTENTION AND SCHOOL SUCCESS: The Long-Term Implications of Attention for School Success among Low-Income Children

This study examined the longitudinal associations between sustained attention in preschool and children’s school success in later elementary school within a low-income sample (N = 2,403). Specifically, two facets of sustained attention (focused attention and lack of impulsivity) at age 5 were explored as independent predictors of children’s academic and behavioral competence across eight measures at age 9. Overall, the pattern of results indicates specificity between the facets of attention and school success, such that focused attention was primarily predictive of academic outcomes while impulsivity was mainly predictive of behavioral outcomes. Both facets of attention predicted teacher ratings of children’s academic skills and approaches to learning, which suggests that they jointly influence outcomes that span both domains of school success. Patterns of association were similar for children above and below the poverty line. Implications of these findings for interventions targeting school readiness and success among at-risk children are discussed.sustained attention, academic achievement, behavioral competence, low-income children

Many Labs 5:Testing pre-data collection peer review as an intervention to increase replicability

Replication studies in psychological science sometimes fail to reproduce prior findings. If these studies use methods that are unfaithful to the original study or ineffective in eliciting the phenomenon of interest, then a failure to replicate may be a failure of the protocol rather than a challenge to the original finding. Formal pre-data-collection peer review by experts may address shortcomings and increase replicability rates. We selected 10 replication studies from the Reproducibility Project: Psychology (RP:P; Open Science Collaboration, 2015) for which the original authors had expressed concerns about the replication designs before data collection; only one of these studies had yielded a statistically significant effect (p < .05). Commenters suggested that lack of adherence to expert review and low-powered tests were the reasons that most of these RP:P studies failed to replicate the original effects. We revised the replication protocols and received formal peer review prior to conducting new replication studies. We administered the RP:P and revised protocols in multiple laboratories (median number of laboratories per original study = 6.5, range = 3?9; median total sample = 1,279.5, range = 276?3,512) for high-powered tests of each original finding with both protocols. Overall, following the preregistered analysis plan, we found that the revised protocols produced effect sizes similar to those of the RP:P protocols (?r = .002 or .014, depending on analytic approach). The median effect size for the revised protocols (r = .05) was similar to that of the RP:P protocols (r = .04) and the original RP:P replications (r = .11), and smaller than that of the original studies (r = .37). Analysis of the cumulative evidence across the original studies and the corresponding three replication attempts provided very precise estimates of the 10 tested effects and indicated that their effect sizes (median r = .07, range = .00?.15) were 78% smaller, on average, than the original effect sizes (median r = .37, range = .19?.50)