Academic Achievement Assessments:

Woodcock Johnson III Tests of Achievement (WJ-III):

Woodcock Johnson III Tests of Achievement (Woodcock, McCrew, & Mather, 2001).  The WJ-III is a standardized measure with established reliability and validity and applicability to a wide age range, beginning at age 3. The selected scales for language/literacy focus on emergent literacy and span the areas of decoding letters and words, vocabulary, and comprehension. The selected measures for math/numeracy span number recognition, simple problem solving, and simple math concepts.

WJ subtests used in this study:  Letter Word, Oral Comprehension, Picture Vocabulary, Applied Problems, and Quantitative Concepts.

Self Regulation Assessments:

Six Measures Selected for Final Battery:

To view more information regarding each of these measures, see:
Administering the PRI Battery of Learning-Related Cognitive Self-Regulation Measures

Peg Tapping:

Peg Tapping (Diamond & Taylor, 1996). In this game, children are asked to tap a peg twice when the experimenter taps once and vice versa. The task requires children to inhibit a natural tendency to mimic the experimenter while remembering the rule for the correct response. Sixteen trials are conducted with 8 one-tap and 8 two-tap trials in random sequence.

Head Toes Knees Shoulders (HTKS):

Head-to-Toes Task (Cameron et al., in press). In this task, which requires inhibitory control, attention, and working memory (though inhibitory control is the main focus) children are asked to play a game in which they must do the opposite of what the experimenter says. The experimenter instructs children to touch their head (or their toes), but instead of following the command, the children are supposed to do the opposite and touch their toes. The measure is available from Claire Cameron, who gave permission for us to use the measure for this project.

Copy Design:

Copying Designs Test (Osborn et al., 1984). Children must copy “exactly” a series of simple geometric designs. Error scores are used to assess attention.

Dimensional Change Card Sort (DCCS):

Dimensional Change Card Sort (Zelazo, 2006). In this reverse categorization task, children must sort a set of cards based on different sorting criteria given by the examiner. For example, the first sort involves color, the second sort involves shape, and the final sort is a mix of color and shape. The task is used to assess attention-shifting.

Kansas Reflection-Impulsivity Scale for Preschoolers (KRISP):

Kansas Reflection-Impulsivity Scale for Preschoolers (Wright, 1971). From an array of choices, children are instructed to select a picture that matches a target picture.  Accuracy is measured as the incorrect responses and this is used to measure attention and sustained focus.

Digit Span:

Digit Span (Wechsler, 2003).  The children are told that they will hear some numbers and they will first repeat the numbers back to the examiner and then later they are asked to repeat the numbers backwards. Difficulty increases by increasing the span of the pattern.

Additional Measures Used but Not Selected for Final Battery:

Turtle Rabbit:

Turtle Rabbit (Kochanska et al., 1996). Children are given a baseline boy/girl toy, a “fast” toy rabbit and a “slow” toy turtle. They’re asked to move the objects along a curved path from start to finish. Children are instructed to be sure and stay on the path. Scores are given for staying on the path around each curve and time to complete the path with each figure is also recorded.

Click to view more information regarding the Turtle Rabbit Task

Operation Span:

Operation Span (Blair & Willoughby, 2006).  For this task, children are shown an outline of a house with a colored circle and an animal inside. Children are asked to label the color and the animal. The page is turned only the outline remains and the children are asked to recall what animal had been in the house. The color is used as a distractor.  This task is a measure of working memory.

For more information on Operation Span, contact Dr. Clancy Blair at the NYU Neuroscience and Education Lab, New York University:

http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/ihdsc/neuroscience_lab

Spatial Conflict:

Spatial Conflict (Gerardi-Caulton, 2000). Children are instructed to touch one of two large dots with the left or right hand depending on which way an arrow points when the arrow appears on alternating sides of a page. This task is a measure of inhibitory control, a child must inhibit the dominant response of touching a dot on the side that corresponds to side of the page an arrow is presented, but instead touch the dot that corresponds to the direction the arrow is pointing (e.g., touch the left dot with the left hand when an arrow presented on the right side of the page is pointing left).

For more information on Spatial Conflict, contact Dr. Clancy Blair at the NYU Neuroscience and Education Lab, New York University:

http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/ihdsc/neuroscience_lab

Whisper:

Whisper Task (Kochanska et al., 1996). Children are asked to whisper the name of 12 familiar cartoon characters (e.g., Elmo, Dora the Explorer, Mickey Mouse).  This task is a measure of impulsivity.  Children need to be able to inhibit the urge to shout out the names of familiar characters to successfully complete this task.

Click to view more information regarding the Whisper Task