Previous research provides evidence that developing a growth mindset--believing that one's capabilities can improve--promotes academic achievement. Although this phenomenon has undergone prior study in a representative sample of ninth graders in the United States, it has not been studied in representative samples of other grade levels or with…

We examined the development of numerical magnitude representations of fractions and decimals from fourth to 12th grade. In Experiment 1, we assessed the rational number magnitude knowledge of 200 Chinese fourth, fifth, sixth, eighth, and 12th graders (92 girls and 108 boys) by presenting fraction and decimal magnitude comparison tasks as well as…

There is a lack of research on students' conceptions of giftedness and intelligence, despite recognition of their influence on real-life factors such as achievement and motivation. This paper presents a cross-sectional mixed methods study that investigated Finnish students' (age 6-16 years; N = 1282) implicit conceptions of giftedness and…

This short-term longitudinal study explored the unique role of proximal classroom factors (teachers' student-specific self-efficacy, autonomy-supportive behaviors, and student-teacher relationships) in students' emotional and behavioral engagement, and the moderating role of grade level. Participants were 472 students and 63 teachers (grades 4-6).…

While the importance of social-emotional learning for student success is well established, educators and researchers have less knowledge and agreement about which social-emotional skills are most important for students and how these skills distribute across student subgroups. Using a rich longitudinal dataset of 221,840 fourth through seventh…

The developmental trajectory of the use of morphemes is still unclear. We investigated the emergence of morphological effects on visual word recognition in German in a large sample across the complete course of reading acquisition in elementary school. To this end, we analyzed lexical decision data on a total of 1,152 words and pseudowords from a…

The association of enumeration and number comparison capacities with arithmetical competence was examined in a large sample of children from 2nd to 9th grades. It was found that efficiency on numerical capacities predicted separately more than 25% of the variance in the individual differences on a timed arithmetical test, and this occurred for…

The goal of the present study was to test opposing views about 4 issues concerning predictors of individual differences in Chinese written composition: (a) whether morphological awareness, syntactic processing, and working memory represent distinct and measureable constructs in Chinese or are just manifestations of general language ability; (b)…

Although autobiographical memory specificity is an important developmental feature fostering adaptation throughout life, little is known about factors related to interindividual differences in autobiographical memory specificity. The current study investigated associations with early adolescents' communication with mother about their experiences…

Few studies have identified individual differences in vocational knowledge or its association with career aspirations or expectations of children. We investigated whether individual differences in grade, gender, academic achievement, and SES predict levels of vocational knowledge, and further examined the relationship between vocational knowledge…

We studied developmental trends in 5 important reasoning tasks that are critical components of the operational definition of rational thinking. The tasks measured denominator neglect, belief bias, base rate sensitivity, resistance to framing, and the tendency toward otherside thinking. In addition to age, we examined 2 other individual difference…

This nonexperimental study explored the relationships among individual differences, contextual variables, and reading achievement of English language learners (ELLs) in one large urban school district in the United States. The sample comprised 840 students in Grades 3-8 and 10 nested within 37 schools. Hierarchical linear modeling results indicate…

Longitudinal structural equation modeling was used to evaluate longitudinal relationships across adjacent grade levels 1 to 7 for levels of language in writing (Model 1, subword letter writing, word spelling, and text composing) or writing and reading (Model 2, subword letter writing and word spelling and reading; Model 3, word spelling and…

Children's relational schemas have been found to account for, and moderate, links between peer victimization and psychosocial difficulties. The present study extends this research by examining whether children's mental representations of their teachers' responses to students' peer harassment moderate associations between peer victimization and…

Can children reason the Bayesian way? We argue that the answer to this question depends on how numbers are represented, because a representation can do part of the computation. We test, for the first time, whether Bayesian reasoning can be elicited in children by means of natural frequencies. We show that when information was presented to fourth,…