Emotionally or motivationally significant stimuli tend to attract, divert, or hold attention more readily than neutral stimuli. These effects arise during numerous tasks, varying as a function of stimulus type or emotional cue. Their neural substrates involve enhanced activity of sensory cortices under direct influence of emotional or reward processing systems, including the amygdala, in combination with other top-down or bottom-up biases that together serve to prioritize behaviorally relevant information for access to conscious awareness. Other indirect influences act through interactions of emotional and motivational systems, with cortical or subcortical networks controlling attention, including executive functions and neuromodulatory pathways. These data reveal that attentional processes encompass multiple biasing signals that can modulate stimulus processing, based not only on space or object representations, as traditionally considered, but also value-based representations. Such mechanisms of emotional attention or affect-driven biases may operate preattentively, involuntarily, or non-consciously, yet nonetheless be regulated by current goals or context.

The role and importance of cognitive factors in the development and maintenance of insomnia have been well recognised for some time. Indeed, insomnia is characterised by several types of challenging thoughts, and these, coupled with hyperarousal, lead to difficulties sleeping. This chapter describes the role of cognitive factors in insomnia and describes in depth a range of cognitive techniques, their background, and the evidence for them. A number of cognitive techniques are described, including cognitive control, paradoxical intention, articulatory suppression, imagery-training, mindfulness, cognitive restructuring, and problem-solving. For each therapeutic, the reader is provided with specific instructions and narratives to follow to aid in their implementation when working with a patient.

Various areas in psychology are interested in whether specific processes underlying judgments and behavior operate in an automatic or nonautomatic fashion. In social psychology, valuable insights can be gained from evidence on whether and how judgments and behavior under suboptimal processing conditions differ from judgments and behavior under optimal processing conditions. In personality psychology, valuable insights can be gained from individual differences in behavioral tendencies under optimal and suboptimal processing conditions. The current chapter provides a method-focused overview of different features of automaticity (e.g., unintentionality, efficiency, uncontrollability, unconsciousness), how these features can be studied empirically, and pragmatic issues in research on automaticity. Expanding on this overview, the chapter describes the procedures of extant implicit measures and the value of implicit measures for studying automatic processes in judgments and behavior. The chapter concludes with a discussion of pragmatic issues in research using implicit measures.

Processing speed and cognitive control show a negative correlation. The more automatic a behavior the less cognitive control is needed and the information is processed faster. Faster processing allows the system to integrate more content efficiently. The chapter uncovers how this interaction between processing speed and cognitive control is influenced by age; task type and complexity; targeted cognitive functions; and children’s language skills. Although the analysis of the relationship between processing speed and cognitive control reveals notable individual differences, monolingual children with developmental language disorder (DLD) generally perform slower than their typically developing peers, whereas bilingual children often outperform their monolingual peers in processing speed. Bilingual children with DLD provide an unparalleled opportunity to study the joint effects of bilingualism and DLD on processing speed. The preliminary findings suggest that bilingualism does attenuate the negative effects of DLD but only in simple task conditions.

The complex interactions between cognitive control and language ability and those between cognitive control and language proficiency are reviewed first separately and then in relationship to each other, and in association with the development of academic skills and social interactions. Both behavioral and neurophysiological studies suggest that language ability and proficiency modulate the engagement of cognitive control processes, particularly working memory, attention, and interference control. Thus, better language abilities and higher bilingual language proficiencies are associated with superior cognitive control performance, whereas language disorder and low bilingual language proficiency are linked to weaker cognitive control performance. Response inhibition, however, does not show a close link with language skills; children with different language abilities and proficiencies may perform similarly on tasks of response inhibition. Age, prior experience, and variation in task types may all influence these relationships.

The Introduction provides a brief review of the overall aims and conceptual and methodological approaches of the book, with a focus on the dynamic interactions between cognitive control and language. It highlights the interdisciplinary nature of the discussions and the integration of behavioral and neurophysiological outcomes throughout the chapters. A further goal is to point to the need for a connection between theoretical models and educational/clinical practices and to facilitate a discussion between researchers and educators/clinicians. The Introduction also includes a short summary of each chapter by presenting the main ideas and critical issues about the development of cognitive control in children with various language skills (e.g., children with language talent, children with bilingualism as their first language, children with developmental language disorder, emerging bilingual speakers).

This chapter provides an overview of the interactions among language, cognition, and social context by examining how individuals with different language abilities and varying language proficiencies respond to assorted social-communicative demands. The analysis of the social context reveals how local (e.g., language register use) and global (e.g., culture, socioeconomic status) changes affect children’s cognitive control and language performance, as indicated by neural and behavioral findings. Social context at the local level is more dynamically changing than the context at the global level, which is more predictable. Children rely on different cognitive control functions in neutral, cooperative, and competitive social contexts. They adapt their cognitive system more efficiently in cooperative and competitive contexts, compared to a neutral one. Children’s behavior across these social situations is most strongly influenced by their age, cultural background, socioeconomic status, language skills, and emotion regulation.

This chapter introduces the key concepts and major theoretical accounts of cognitive control (e.g., conflict monitoring, the expected value of control) that seek to answer fundamental questions about the control mechanisms, the recruitment of control resources, the selection of task-relevant processes, and the prevention of interference. Although some of the theories focus more on the regulatory processes, while others on the evaluative mechanisms, most of them complement each other. Essential questions, such as the sources of capacity limitations, the continuum between control and automaticity, cognitive flexibility as a marker, the effects of contextual changes, and individual differences in both behavioral performance and neural activity are critically discussed throughout the chapter. The most widely used behavioral paradigms and their outcome measures (e.g., congruency effects, intrusion cost, switching cost, practice effects, post-error slowing and post-error reduction of interference) are presented and linked to different conceptual constructs.

The effects of age on language and cognitive control development are examined in monolingual and bilingual speakers, in typically developing children, in early, and late talkers. Individual differences in language acquisition are linked to the development of other nonlinguistic cognitive abilities, brain maturation, and environmental factors. Particularly for the early years, developmental trends and converging and diverging cognitive-linguistic processes are identified. Developmental changes in error patterns, learning styles, and strategy use are analyzed between early and late bilingual speakers and between typically developing children and late talkers. Challenges related to the variability in both first language acquisition and second language learning are discussed and links between early language development and later academic performance are identified. Age-related changes in cognitive control functions and their interactions with language are discussed for speakers with different language abilities and proficiencies.

This chapter describes how the quality and quantity of language input affects both children’s language ability and their cognitive control development. A nuanced exploration of the distinctions between input and intake as well as between input and exposure points to a complex pattern of interactions among these components and children’s communicative skills. The interactions among parental input, language environment, and the child’s age, as well as communicative abilities are bidirectional and affect children’s cognitive control skills, particularly working memory and interference control. The dynamic nature of caregiver – child interactions is also reflected in the manner parents adjust their language input based on their children’s communicative abilities. Parents of children with superior language skills used more elaborated language than did the parents of children with language delay, but those who participated in parental intervention increased the language and cognitive stimulation of their children.

In this chapter, we delve into the intricate domains of working memory (WM) and executive functions (EFs), two pivotal cognitive processes. We elucidate WM, delineate its subcomponents, and elucidate the tasks employed to evaluate them. The chapter explores the neural foundations of WM and EFs, spotlighting the key brain regions and networks implicated in these cognitive operations. We unravel the developmental trajectory of WM throughout childhood and adolescence, emphasizing the underlying brain changes fueling this progression. A distinction is made between cool EFs, which function in emotionally neutral contexts, and hot EFs, which govern behavior in high-stakes scenarios. We underscore the influence of WM and EFs on academic achievement, especially in educational and problem-solving contexts. The chapter also provides insights into strategies for enhancing academic performance by either minimizing WM and EF demands or refining these cognitive faculties.