The acquisition of early mathematical knowledge is critical for successful long-term academic development. Mathematical language is one of the strongest predictors of children's early mathematical success. Findings from previous studies have provided correlational evidence supporting the importance of mathematical language to the development of children's mathematics skills, but there is limited causal evidence supporting this link. To address this research gap, 47 Head Start children were randomly assigned to a mathematical language intervention group or a business-as-usual group. Over the course of eight weeks, interventionists implemented a dialogic reading intervention focused on quantitative and spatial mathematical language. At posttest, students in the intervention group significantly outperformed the students in the comparison group not only on a mathematical language assessment, but on a mathematical knowledge assessment as well. These findings indicate that increasing children's exposure to mathematical language can positively affect their general mathematics skills. This study is an important first step in providing causal evidence of the importance of early mathematical language for children's general mathematical knowledge and the potential for mathematical language interventions to increase children's overall mathematics abilities.

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It is well established that parental knowledge contributes to adolescents' well-being and school success and scholars have noted that parents and adolescents report different levels of knowledge. Discrepancies in parental knowledge have implications for adolescent outcomes such as risk behaviors, but little is known about the implications of knowledge discrepancies for adolescents' school outcomes. The present study examined discrepancies in parent and adolescent reports of parental knowledge and investigated the extent to which knowledge discrepancies were linked to school engagement. Participants were early adolescents (N = 174; 53 % female) and their parents (90 % mothers). Adolescents (57 % African American/Black, 18 % multiracial, 17 % White/Caucasian, 7 % Hispanic/Latino and 1 % Asian American) attended a Midwestern, Title 1, urban, public middle school. Adolescents completed surveys in their homerooms and parents completed paper-pencil surveys at home or surveys via telephone. Results showed that parents reported more knowledge of adolescents' activities and whereabouts compared to adolescents' reports. Knowledge discrepancies were associated with school bonding and school self-esteem such that dyads in which adolescents reported more knowledge than their parents reported had significantly higher levels of school bonding and school self-esteem compared to dyads in which parents reported much more knowledge.

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Among adults in their later years of life, the management of chronic illness is a common experience. By age 65, about three quarters of adults are managing at least one chronic illness, and the prevalence of chronic conditions increases with age (Fabbri et al.,