Cognitive and Linguistic Development in Children and Adolescents: 2nd Edition

A special issue of Children (ISSN 2227-9067). This special issue belongs to the section "Pediatric Neurology & Neurodevelopmental Disorders".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 March 2025) | Viewed by 459

Special Issue Editors


E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Unit of Child Psychopathology, Scientific Institute IRCSS E. Medea, 23842 Bosisio Parini, Italy
Interests: language disorders; reading disorders; psychometrics; eHealth; intervention
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Research Centre on Child Studies, University of Minho, 4710-057 Braga, Portugal
Interests: language development; reading and writing; psychometrics; reading disabilities; executive functioning
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to invite you to contribute to this Special Issue of Children which focuses on the cognitive and linguistic development of children and adolescents. Cognitive development entails all of the mental processes involved in acquiring, organizing, and using knowledge. Since the seminal work of Piaget, research on cognitive development, the factors that influence it, and its importance in other areas of development, has expanded substantially. Its relationship with linguistic development has attracted particular interest: it is well established that language builds on cognitive development, but language is also a vehicle that supports it. Therefore, researchers have frequently pointed out deficits in skills such as memory, executive function, reasoning, or problem solving in children with linguistic deficits and/or with reading/writing disabilities.

This Special Issue aims to present recent contributions to a more complete understanding of typical and atypical cognitive development, linguistic development (oral or written), and/or the relationship between them. Historically, the focus of cognitive and linguistic development has been placed on childhood, but this development continues in later stages of the life cycle. Thus, this Special Issue will include research conducted with children at various stages of development and/or adolescents, as well as longitudinal studies.

In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome and research areas may include, but are not limited to, topics addressing both typical and atypical conditions or trajectories such as:

  • Oral language development;
  • Cognitive development;
  • Reading and writing development;
  • Specific language impairment;
  • Reading and/or writing disabilities;
  • Executive functioning;
  • Memory;
  • Reasoning and problem solving;
  • The intervention/promotion of cognitive or linguistic skills (oral or written).

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Maria Luisa Lorusso
Dr. Irene Cadime
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Children is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • oral language
  • reading
  • writing
  • cognitive development
  • neurodevelopmental disorders
  • learning disabilitie

Benefits of Publishing in a Special Issue

  • Ease of navigation: Grouping papers by topic helps scholars navigate broad scope journals more efficiently.
  • Greater discoverability: Special Issues support the reach and impact of scientific research. Articles in Special Issues are more discoverable and cited more frequently.
  • Expansion of research network: Special Issues facilitate connections among authors, fostering scientific collaborations.
  • External promotion: Articles in Special Issues are often promoted through the journal's social media, increasing their visibility.
  • e-Book format: Special Issues with more than 10 articles can be published as dedicated e-books, ensuring wide and rapid dissemination.

Further information on MDPI's Special Issue policies can be found here.

Related Special Issue

Published Papers (1 paper)

Order results
Result details
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Research

28 pages, 1825 KiB  
Article
Letter and Word Processing in Developmental Dyslexia: Evidence from a Two-Alternative Forced Choice Task
by Daniela Traficante, Pierluigi Zoccolotti and Chiara Valeria Marinelli
Children 2025, 12(5), 572; https://doi.org/10.3390/children12050572 - 29 Apr 2025
Viewed by 126
Abstract
Background/Objectives: The present study aimed to investigate letter processing in children with dyslexia and typically developing readers as a function of the type of orthographic context. Methods and Results: In Experiment 1A, children performed a two-alternative forced choice task (Reicher–Wheeler paradigm) using as [...] Read more.
Background/Objectives: The present study aimed to investigate letter processing in children with dyslexia and typically developing readers as a function of the type of orthographic context. Methods and Results: In Experiment 1A, children performed a two-alternative forced choice task (Reicher–Wheeler paradigm) using as probes either high-frequency words, pronounceable pseudo-words, or unpronounceable non-words. The group differences in letter recognition were clearly distinguished from those present in typical word and pseudo-word reading conditions (Experiment 1B), as a global factor was present only in the latter case. In Experiment 2, the two-alternative forced choice task required the child to search for the target letter in the subsequent multi-letter string (i.e., words, pseudo-words, or non-words), thus reducing the memory load. Detecting the target letter was more difficult in a word than in a pseudo-word or non-word array, indicating that the word form’s lexical activation interfered with the target’s analysis in both groups of children. In Experiment 3, children performed the two-alternative forced choice task with symbols (Greek letters) either in the Reicher–Wheeler mode of presentation (Experiment 3A) or in the search condition (Experiment 3B). Children with dyslexia performed identically to typically developing readers in keeping with the selectivity of their orthographic difficulties. Conclusions: The present data indicate that children with dyslexia suffer from an early deficit in making perceptual operations that require the conjunction analysis of a set of letters. Still, this deficit is not due to an inability to scan the letter string. The deficit is confined to orthographic stimuli and does not extend to other types of visual targets. Full article
Show Figures

Figure 1

Back to TopTop