Many students struggle when learning to read. Our understanding of how and why reading development goes amiss is incomplete. In this paper, we recap past and present findings about how an important cognitive skill, executive function (EF), is related to reading achievement. We outline brain and behavioral findings and discuss how EF shapes typical and atypical reading development.

Cognitive enrichment in homes plays an important role in shaping children's development during the first few years of life. We inquired whether home enrichment was associated with behavior and brain function in a critical cognitive system, working memory, necessary for maintaining information in memory for short periods of time. Enrichment differentially engaged frontal and parietal function in children, which in turn was associated with working memory behavior.

We investigated differences in phonological processing, language, and reading in children with epilepsy compared with children with and without language problems. Results show that children with epilepsy have difficulty deciphering the sounds of language and that epilepsy is associated with difficulty sounding out words and comprehending written passages. The findings suggest that there may be other aspects of cognition that impact reading ability in children with epilepsy.

Τhe notion of LS posits that individuals have a preferred modality of learning and that presenting to-be-learned material in this modality results in optimal learning. Here, we report a systematic study testing this notion. The study uses novel and ecologically valid stimuli, namely sign-words, as the to-be-learned material. We hypothesized that individuals with a visual LS will be at an advantage when learning sign-words, a hypothesis we failed to confirm.

Creativity is important for school performance. Furthermore, research suggests that creativity may be stimulated by low-intensity physical activity. Therefore, we investigated the influence of standing on creativity in vocational education and training students. The results show that there was no significant effect of standing on divergent or convergent thinking test performance. The findings indicate that 30 min of standing does not affect creativity in vocational education and training students.