This study suggests that mindfulness is associated with better adjustment to CNP. This provides the foundation to explore whether mindfulness-based interventions improve quality of life among cancer survivors living with CNP.

The objective of the present study was to examine the contribution of lexical and nonlexical processes to skilled reading and spelling in Persian. Persian is a mixed orthography that allows one to study within one language characteristics typically found in shallow orthographies as well as those found in deeper orthographies. 61 senior high-school students (mean age = 17; 8, SD = 4 months) attending schools in Iran were tested on reading and spelling of words and nonwords. The word stimuli differed in terms of reading transparency (transparent when all phonemes have corresponding letters vs. opaque when short vowels were not marked with a letter) and spelling polygraphy (nonpolygraphic phonemes vs. polygraphic phonemes). The nonwords were transparent and nonpolygraphic. The reading results showed that both transparent and opaque words were read faster than nonwords, and that transparent words were read faster than opaque words. Moreover, both transparent and opaque words were affected by word frequency. These findings suggest that skilled readers of Persian relied on lexical processes to read words. In contrast, the spelling results failed to show a word-advantage effect suggesting that skilled spellers of Persian rely on nonlexical processes to spell words. Moreover, orthographic complexity also affected spelling. Specifically, nonpolygraphic words were spelled faster than polygraphic words for both transparent and opaque words. Taken together, the findings showed that skilled reading and spelling in Persian rely on different underlying processes.

The main objective of the present study was to examine the contribution of phonological and orthographic skills to Persian reading and spelling. The Persian language is of interest because it has very consistent grapheme-to-phoneme correspondences, but somewhat inconsistent phoneme-to-grapheme correspondences. Reading, spelling, phonological, and orthographic skills were tested in a sample of 109 monolingual Persian students (mean age = 8;1, SD = 4 mo) attending Grade 2 in Iran. The results showed that although monolingual Persian children relied both on phonological and orthographic skills, phonological skills were a strong predictor for both reading and spelling. Another objective of the study was to compare children's spelling performance in terms of phoneme-to-grapheme (PG) consistencies. As expected, children spelled PG-consistent words more accurately than PG-inconsistent words. Moreover, they relied more on orthographic skills for spelling PG-inconsistent words than for spelling PG-consistent words. The results are discussed in terms of the differential effect of orthographic consistency on reading and spelling.

Executive functions (EFs) and intelligence were examined concurrently and longitudinally in 126 preschool children. EF was assessed using the Flexible Item Selection Task (FIST) and the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive FunctionPreschool Version (BRIEF-P). Children's intelligence was assessed using the Verbal and Performance subtests from Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of IntelligenceThird Edition (WPPSI-III). Results showed a significant association between verbal and nonverbal intelligence with both the FIST and the BRIEF-P. The BRIEF-P working memory scale showed the strongest relation with EF and intelligence at both time points. Results are discussed in terms of differential association between intelligence and components of EF.Executive functions (EFs) refer to a number of skills such as inhibition, planning, working memory, abstract thinking, selective attention, and cognitive flexibility

We investigated the reading and spelling development of 140 Persian children attending Grades 1-4 in Iran. Persian has very consistent letter-sound correspondences, but it varies in transparency because 3 of its 6 vowel phonemes are not marked with letters. Persian also varies in spelling consistency because 6 phonemes have more than one orthographic representation. We tested whether lexicality effects-an advantage of words over nonwords-would be affected be reading transparency and spelling consistency. We found that children became more efficient readers and spellers across grades, with the greatest growth occurring between Grades 1 and 2. For reading, lexicality effects were present with transparent words starting in Grade 2, but lexicality effects with opaque words were not yet present in Grade 4. As expected, the size of transparency effects for reading decreased across grades. For spelling, however, there was no lexicality effect for either consistent or inconsistent words. Moreover, consistency effects were large and did not decrease systematically across grades. Most interesting from a developmental perspective was the finding that both reading transparency and spelling polygraphy affected reading as well as spelling in Grades 1 and 2, but the word characteristics had differential effects as a function of literacy task in Grades 3 and 4. This pattern highlights the vulnerability of children's representations and processes during the early phases of acquisition as well as the rapidity with which representations and processes become specialized as a function of the literacy task at hand.