At what ages are young people most open to political influence? We test the "formative years" model that underscores the importance of childhood experiences for political development against the "impressionable years" model that asserts the primacy of lessons learned during adolescence. To assess the relative merits of these…

Based on investment theories and guided by Mussel's (2013) intellect model, the present study investigated reciprocal relations over 1 year (2021-2022) between investment traits (need for cognition, achievement motives, epistemic curiosity) and fluid and crystallized cognitive abilities in 565 German elementary school children (298 girls;…

Individuals feel lonely when they perceive a discrepancy between their desired and their actually experienced quantity and quality of social relationships. Prior research has demonstrated the importance of loneliness for various health-related aspects. In the present article, we extend the existing literature on loneliness by investigating its…

The current longitudinal study examined the predictive associations between the development of future perceptions in adolescence and depressive symptoms in adolescence and early and middle adulthood. Participants (N = 1,527; 48.3% female; broadly representative of Western Germany with respect to race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status) were…

Longitudinal research on students' interest in higher education showed that interest declines throughout the study program. While researchers reported numerous factors explaining interest on the student level, research on the relationship between the lecturer level and students' interest development is considered scarce. This study aimed to…

Perfectionism is a multidimensional personality trait whose facets differentially relate to indicators of psychological functioning, such as global self-esteem. There has been some theoretical disagreement whether perfectionism affects global self-esteem, or vice versa. This question merits renewed attention due to increasing efforts to prevent…

This study examined how quantity and quality of early childhood education and care (ECEC) are related to the socio-emotional adjustment of children born in Germany (30-48 months old, N = 395). Previous research focused on a small set of ECEC features, used broad measures, and yielded inconclusive results. We assessed ECEC quantity (age at entry,…

Empirical research considers teacher collaboration to be an important predictor of outcome variables at the student, teacher, and school level. Principals are responsible for shaping teachers' work environments, and in doing so, they can strengthen and support teacher collaboration. Drawing on social interdependence theory, we hypothesized that…

This article models the migration flow of EEA students who graduated from masters and doctoral programmes in UK universities. The increased intra-European mobility of students and graduates is claimed to have crucial positive influence on building Europe's high-skill labour force, which in turn would strengthen its competency in the global…

Fluid intelligence and conscientiousness are important predictors of students' academic performance and competence gains. Although their individual contributions have been widely acknowledged, less is known about their potential interplay. Do students profit disproportionately from being both smart and conscientious? We addressed this question…

There is a common understanding that becoming a teacher needs to be a continuous and coherent process of educational and professional development across all teacher education phases. This study focuses on the professional preparation of candidate teachers when entering the induction phase. It provides an opportunity to reconstruct their transition…

As a result of public discussions regarding Germany's standing on international rankings of student achievement, increased attention was focused on enhancing cognitive stimulation in preschools. There are some concerns that preschool curricula that focus more on cognitive stimulation rather than on socio-emotional skills might neglect the…

Research Findings: This study investigated the long-term interrelations among children's language competencies, their home literacy environment (HLE), and 3 aspects of socioemotional development from ages 3 to 8, controlling for characteristics of the child and family. For this sample of 547 typically developing German children, parents and…

The present study examines the impact of family risk factors (e.g., migration background, poverty) in early childhood on children's numeracy skills during preschool in Germany, and if these relations are mediated through the quality of the home learning environment. The data used for this research were collected using the longitudinal study…

Theories of social-cognitive development have attributed a foundational role to declarative joint attention. The present longitudinal study of 83 children, who were assessed on a battery of social-cognitive tasks at multiple measurement points from the age of 12 to 50 months, tested a predictive model of theory of mind (false-belief…