Executive functions are psychological processes of great importance for proper functioning in various areas of human development, including academic performance. For this reason, from both clinical and educational perspectives, there is great interest in how they are assessed. This article describes the development and standardization process of Yellow-Red, an instrument for directly assessing executive functions in children between 6 and 11 years of age in a playful format using digital support. The test was based on a three-factor model of executive functioning: inhibition, working memory, and cognitive flexibility. Yellow-Red comprises six subtests: cognitive inhibition, behavioral inhibition, auditory working memory, visual working memory, cognitive flexibility, and a global assessment test of executive functions. The test was administered to 245 boys and girls between 6 and 11 years of age. Along with the Yellow-Red subtests, gold standard tests were applied for each of the executive functions assessed. The test’s psychometric properties are powerful in both reliability and validity evidence. The reliability indices are all greater than 0.8. As evidence of convergent validity, correlations were established between the tests, and the tests considered gold standards. All correlations were significant, with values ranging between 0.42 and 0.73. On the other hand, the factor structure of the test was analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis. Although it is possible to demonstrate the progressive differentiation of the factor structure with age, it was only possible to find two factors at older ages, one for inhibition/flexibility and one for working memory.

GraphoGame is a computer-based game that trains grapheme-to-phoneme associations and has been shown to benefit reading acquisition in different languages and countries. In transparent languages, such as Spanish, learning grapheme-to-phoneme associations is of great importance when learning to read, and GraphoGame can help children at risk of developing reading difficulties overcome their struggles. Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) are at high risk of developing reading difficulties, and they are therefore an interesting target group for a study on the effects of using GraphoGame as an intervention tool, as well as a tool for early diagnosis of later reading difficulties. Using generalised linear mixed models, this article explores the progress made in GraphoGame and reading-related skills by children with DLD – with and without comprehension difficulties – and their typically developing (TD) classmates in kindergarten or first grade. Fifty-nine children were included in the current study (16 TD and 43 DLD; mean age = 6.4 years, SD = 0.7 years). By testing children before and after six weeks of GraphoGame intervention, changes in their performance at letter recognition, pseudoword recognition and phonological awareness are studied. In addition to the differences due to oral language skills (expressive and receptive), how the children perform in GraphoGame and whether the progress in the aforementioned reading-related skills is predictive of reading status in second grade (good or poor readers) are examined. After six weeks of GraphoGame intervention, all children improved at all of the assessed reading-related skills, regardless of the test (letter recognition, phonological awareness and pseudoword recognition). Additionally, the children with DLD with comprehension difficulties made less progress in GraphoGame than the other two groups. The same was found for the children who were classified as poor readers in second grade: none of the poor readers reached the highest levels of the game. Finally, performance at the first level of GraphoGame mildly correlated with reading fluency, as assessed one year after the intervention. Future studies should consider larger populations, as well as the long-term effect of interventions such as the one studied here.

Inclusive education and special education are the means of education for people with special educational needs and specific disabilities. Inclusive education has been promoted in recent decades as the optimal method of educating in diversity. However, in Chile, access to quality education remains a major challenge for students and their families. In this article, we explore the experiences, motivations, and main factors in making early educational decisions by families and caregivers of children on the autism spectrum. In particular, using six semi-structured interviews conducted with families and caregivers of children, we study the process of initial entry into the educational system, including parents’ perceptions and knowledge of the access routes to it and the facilitators and barriers present for their incorporation. The results indicate that, from the very beginning, the information available social and family attitudes, may hinder children’s access to the available care and education system, with a generalized demand to strengthen social and institutional support networks. In general, and as may be expected, educational decisions, trajectories, and expectations are interdependent and evolve with the experience of caregivers and children in the educational system and their families.

Recently, the use of gender-inclusive language variants has spread considerably in Spanish-speaking communities. However, few studies analyze the spontaneous uses and processing of these forms and even fewer studies focus on the varieties of Spanish spoken in Latin America. There are also few studies in Spanish that analyze the complex relationships between stereotypes and gender morphology. In this article, we present a task to evaluate the processing of the non-binary morphological innovation [-e] in two linguistic communities (Argentina and Chile). For this purpose, we consider two independent variables (stereotypicality bias and gender morphology) in the comprehension of sentences presenting role nouns with masculine and feminine stereotypicality. We analyzed three dependent variables: noun phrase (determiner + role noun) reading time, spillover word reading time and total sentence reading time. We found different patterns of performance among the different linguistic communities and the dependent variables analyzed. On the one hand, the differences in the two population groups highlight the importance of analyzing dialectal variation in psycholinguistic studies. On the other hand, the different reading patterns among the dependent variables could be explained by different underlying processes: lexical semantics or semantic integration at the sentence level. Moreover, the non-binary form [-e] seemed to function as generic and not to hinder language processing in Spanish speakers from Argentina and Chile.

Stereotype construction is a complex process, with multiple relations to language processing, that combines collective sociocultural factors with individual cognitive elements. Regarding gendered languages, there is a debate about the effect of grammatical gender on the representation of inanimate entities. To evaluate the potential interaction between gender stereotypes and gender morphology on words that refer to inanimate entities in three different communities of Spanish speakers, we developed a task of conscious judgments on the level of association to men or women of words that refer to objects. In a 3 × 2 × 3 × 2 design, we manipulated Semantic Bias (gender stereotypicality), with three levels (male, e.g., martillo, hammer-M; female, e.g., vestido, dress-M; neutral, e.g., lápiz, pencil-M); Morphology, with two levels (masculine, e.g., vestido, dress-M; feminine, e.g., pulsera, bracelet-F); Linguistic variety, with three levels (Argentine, Chilean and Peninsular) and Questionnaire, with two levels (related to men vs. related to women). The results showed that grammatical gender has an effect on words that refer to inanimate entities when those words do not carry a strong stereotypical association (neutral items), semantic bias related to gender stereotypes overshadows any potential effect of grammatical gender in biased items, and there are differences depending on the community (Argentine, Chilean and Peninsular).

Inclusive education has been the primary route chosen for the education of students with disabilities or special educational needs in Chile. Nevertheless, accessing quality education involves navigating a lengthy journey and making decisions that become more challenging when choosing between inclusive or special education. The objective of this article was to explore the challenges and supports identified by caregivers of students with disabilities or special educational needs, as well as what adaptations they and their environments have had to incorporate for the full development of the children under their care. By employing a qualitative methodology, we conducted eleven semi-structured interviews and three ethnographic observations. The results emphasize the proactive role of caregivers in assuming administrative functions within the school community. However, the most notable aspect was their capacity for adaptation and reconceptualization regarding disability and normality, sometimes conflicting with those in their family environments and their own beliefs. This provides evidence of an innovative adaptation involving the reshaping of expectations and conceptualizations that impact educational trajectories. La educación inclusiva ha sido la principal vía a seguir para la formación de estudiantes con discapacidad o necesidades educativas especiales en Chile. A pesar de ello, acceder a una educación de calidad, implica recorrer un extenso camino y tomar decisiones que se vuelven más desafiantes al deber optar entre una educación inclusiva o especial. El objetivo de este artículo fue explorar los desafíos y apoyos identificados por las cuidadoras de estudiantes con discapacidad o necesidades educativas especiales y qué adecuaciones han debido incorporar, tanto ellas como sus entornos, para el pleno desarrollo de los niños y niñas bajo su cuidado. Utilizando una metodología cualitativa, llevamos a cabo once entrevistas semi-estructuradas y tres observaciones etnográficas. Los resultados resaltan el papel proactivo de las cuidadoras al asumir incluso funciones administrativas en la comunidad escolar. Sin embargo, lo más notable fue su capacidad de adaptación y reconceptualización sobre la discapacidad y normalidad, siendo a veces contrarias a las de sus entornos familiares y a las propias. Esto evidencia una innovadora adaptación que implica la reformulación de expectativas y conceptualizaciones que inciden en las trayectorias educativas.