This study explores the extent to which differences in research design explain variation in Head Start program impacts. We employ meta-analytic techniques to predict effect sizes for cognitive and achievement outcomes as a function of the type and rigor of research design, quality and type of outcome measure, activity level of control group, and…

The belief that studying mathematics improves reasoning skills, known as the Theory of Formal Discipline (TFD), has been held since the time of Plato. Research evidence supports this idea, at least in the context of students who had chosen to study post-compulsory mathematics. Here we examined the development of reasoning skills in 16- to…

Use of multivariate analysis (e.g., multivariate analysis of variance) is common when normally distributed outcomes are collected in intervention research. However, when mixed responses--a set of normal and binary outcomes--are collected, standard multivariate analyses are no longer suitable. While mixed responses are often obtained in…

This article offers a brief and personal account of the historical background, implementation and principal findings from the Trois-Rivieres regional project, a large-scale quasi-experimental intervention that tested the impact of providing a daily hour of specialist-taught quality physical education upon the physical and mental development of…

Fourteen children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and fourteen age-matched typically-developing (TD) controls were tested on an adapted version of the Twenty Questions Task (Mosher and Hornsby in Studies in cognitive growth. Wiley, New York, pp 86-102, "1966") to examine effects of content, executive and verbal IQ factors on category use in…

The purpose of this research is to determine the effects of home-based programmes aimed specifically at improving developmental outcomes for preschool children from socially disadvantaged families. The authors searched the following databases between 7 October and 12 October 2010: Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) (2010,…

Prodigies are individuals with exceptional mental abilities. How is it possible that some of these people mentally calculate exponentiations with high accuracy and speed? We examined CP, a mental calculation prodigy, and a control group of 11 normal calculators for moderate mental arithmetic tasks. CP has additionally been tested for exceptionally…

The current study aimed to compare deictic relational responding and Theory of Mind (ToM) performances in 60 non-clinical young adults with a profile of high versus low social anhedonia in order to investigate a possible link between social anhedonia and ToM functioning. The results indicated that social anhedonic participants were less accurate…

The comparison of the neurocognitive functioning of people with pediatric bipolar disorder (PBD) with a control group shows that the developmental progress in executive functions and verbal memory of those with PBD was significantly less than those in the control group. The results were seen after comparing data from baseline cognitive tests and a…

This study investigated the comprehension and effectiveness of teaching formal, probabilistic decision-making skills to middle school students. Two specific objectives were to determine (1) if middle school students can comprehend a probabilistic decision-making approach, and (2) if exposure to the modeling approaches improves middle school…

The expansion of digital technologies and the rapid changes they undergo through time face users with new cognitive, social, and ergonomic challenges that they need to master in order to perform effectively. In recent years, following empirical reports on performance differences between different age-groups, there is a debate in the research…

The North Carolina Governor's School offers a six-week residential summer program for four hundred academically talented rising juniors. This article measures the school's impact on these students in four fundamental areas: cognitive maturity, moral reasoning, personal learning style, and projections for the future. The results showed that…

This study advances research on media literacy by comparing the effectiveness of two versions of a media literacy intervention over time. Participants (156 children in 4th or 5th grade) were randomly assigned to one of two treatment groups or a control group. Both treatment groups were exposed to an instructional intervention designed to reduce…

This study examined Theory of Mind in Williams syndrome (WS) and in normal chronological age-matched and mental age-matched control groups, using a picture sequencing task. This task assesses understanding of pretence, intention and false belief, while controlling for social-script knowledge and physical cause-and-effect reasoning. The task was…

Males with fragile X syndrome (FXS) have difficulties with social interaction and many show autistic features. This study examined whether the social deficits characteristic of FXS are associated with theory of mind difficulties. Two groups of boys with FXS participated: a group with few autistic features and a group with many autistic features.…