While intelligence and motivational variables are well-established predictors of academic achievement, Need for Cognition (NFC), the stable intrinsic motivation to engage in and enjoy challenging intellectual activity, has not yet been considered comprehensively in this field, especially not longitudinally. By applying latent change score…

People view many attributes, including intelligence, through implicit theories (or mindsets). Entity mindsets position the attribute as unchangeable or static, whereas incremental mindsets see the attribute as malleable or capable of being changed/improved (Dweck & Leggett, 1988). The present studies examined a new questionnaire designed to…

Gifted underachievers perform worse in school than would be expected based on their high intelligence. Possible causes for underachievement are low motivational dispositions (need for cognition) and metacognitive competences. This study tested the interplay of these variables longitudinally with gifted and non-gifted students from Germany…

Studying successful intelligence and personality traits that influence academic achievement helps to realise the underlying abilities of students with high intelligence in teacher education programmes who have low academic achievement. Factors that do not influence academic achievement are probably important factors for life success. The purpose…

The important role of early self-regulation skills has been repeatedly demonstrated in research. However, there is a lack of studies that have simultaneously examined the influence of hot and cool self-regulation skills on school performance and behavior problems in a longitudinal design from preschool to elementary school and controlling…

The present study examined the mediating role of fluid intelligence between working memory (WM) and academic achievement and tested the invariance of this model across gender in a random sample of university students (N = 560, 228 boys & 332 girls). Heart and Flower task (Diamond, 2013) and Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices[superscript TM]…

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…

A main goal of the university institution should be to reduce the desertion of its students, in fact, the dropout rate constitutes a basic indicator in the accreditation processes of university centers. Thus, evaluating the cognitive functions and learning skills of students with an increased risk of academic failure can be useful for the adoption…

While bivariate associations between motivation and academic achievement have been soundly established, only a few studies have documented evidence for its incremental predictive role above and beyond other student features related to student achievement, such as intelligence and personality. Moreover, it is not yet clear which motivational…

The actiotope model of giftedness (AMG) highlights the interactions between the individual and the environment. Educational and learning capital (ELC) are essential resources that promote the development of excellence. The study objectives were to examine the contribution of educational capital (EC), learning capital (LC), and general intelligence…

This study utilized data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (N = 14,860) to examine whether early-life family income (age 0-5) predicted long-term academic achievement (age 16-18) and to investigate the role of executive function (EF) assessed multiple times across age 7-11 in explaining this association. Task-based EF was a…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to use an established model of working memory in children to predict an established model of word learning to determine whether working memory explained word learning variance over and above the contributions of expressive vocabulary and nonverbal IQ. Method: One hundred sixty-seven English-speaking second…

The present study aimed to investigate the relationship between students' academic motivation, implicit beliefs about intelligence and learning strategies among undergraduate healthcare students. First-year students of healthcare degree courses from a university in Southern Italy were surveyed. The study measured psychological constructs by means…

This study explores the attributions to which undergraduate university students ascribe academic achievement. Attribution theory was used as a means to understand scholastic success-failure. The questions that guided the study were the following: What are the causal attributions that predominate in students' academic achievement? Is there a…

Research has shown that the development of cognitive and social skills in preschool predicts school readiness in kindergarten. However, most longitudinal studies are short-term, tracking children's development only through the early elementary school years. This study aims to investigate the long-term impact of preschool predictors, intelligence,…