The public debate on the use of the German nonbinary gender asterisk ("Lehrer*in" 'teacher') is emotionally charged. While it has been adopted by political and educational institutions, opponents argue that it is inappropriate for making persons identifying themselves beyond the male-female-dichotomy more visible. We investigated this…

Learning processes that involve cognitive incongruity are closely tied to emotional experiences such as curiosity or confusion. The present study examined how discovering that a confidently held misconception is incorrect influences emotions and in turn the motivation to seek additional information. We asked 275 preservice teachers to judge if…

Several studies have demonstrated that individual differences in processing speed fully mediate the association between age and intelligence, whereas the association between processing speed and intelligence cannot be explained by age differences. Because measures of processing speed reflect a plethora of cognitive and motivational processes, it…

In recent years, mathematical models of decision making, such as the diffusion model, have been endorsed in individual differences research. These models can disentangle different components of the decision process, like processing speed, speed-accuracy trade-offs, and duration of non-decisional processes. The diffusion model estimates individual…

Previous studies demonstrated that dual-task impairments are higher in children than in young adults. A previous study systematically assessed the sources of these larger dual-task impairments by identifying age-related differences in capacity limitations during dual-task processing. Capacity limitations in central cognitive processes were present…

The architecture of sleep undergoes distinct changes during childhood and early adolescence. Slow wave sleep is involved in memory processing and may support active consolidation of newly encoded representations to support the formation of abstracted "gist" memories. Here, we examined sleep and overnight memory formation in German school…

Purpose: The purpose was (1) to test a new version of a mental rotation task (MRT), which assesses mental rotation abilities of men and women for sport-specific items, and (2) to investigate potential differences in MRT performance, which are based on athletic expertise. Methods: Eighty-eight basketball experts (42 females) and 123 novices (64…

Disengagement is a concept that captures the gradual behavioral, affective, and cognitive distancing from school, and is thus an early indicator of students being at risk for dropout. Based on a social identity framework, we predicted that higher social identification with the class and a positive classroom climate would be associated with lower…

This eye-tracking study examines how differences in sources' trustworthiness are used by readers to regulate and resolve conflicting scientific claims. One hundred forty-four university students were sequentially presented with two conflicting scientific claims (regarding nanotechnology) across two texts. The claims were indicated to stem from two…

Creativity is a broad and complex construct, difficult to define and to quantify, assumed to introduce new impulses into science education (STEM), and leading to better acceptance of science by adolescents. Therefore, increasing efforts are being undertaken to integrate traditional creativity (Arts), in modifying STEM to STEAM. Consequently, a…

It has been suggested that due to functional similarity, sortal object individuation might be a primordial form of psychological essentialism. For example, the relative independence of identity judgment from perceived surface features is a characteristic of essentialist reasoning. Also, infants engaging in sortal object individuation pay more…

This is the first study to investigate the effects of test methods (while-listening performance and post-listening performance) and gender on measured listening ability and brain activation under test conditions. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) was used to examine three brain regions associated with listening comprehension: the…

In the course of their acculturation process, minority students need to negotiate the adaption to the host society's culture and the maintenance of the culture of their country of origin. This identity construction is complex and may encompass contradicting and competing goals. The adjustment to school is seen as a relevant acculturation marker.…

Performance in elementary cognitive tasks is moderately correlated with fluid intelligence and working memory capacity. These correlations are higher for more complex tasks, presumably due to increased demands on working memory capacity. In accordance with the binding hypothesis, which states that working memory capacity reflects the limit of a…

In Simon-type interference tasks, participants are asked to perform a 2-choice reaction on a stimulus dimension while ignoring the stimulus position. Commonly, robust congruency effects are found; that is, reactions are faster when the relevant stimulus attribute and the assigned response match the location of the stimulus. Simon congruency…