Superstitious behaviors persist across time, culture, and age. Although often considered irrational and even potentially harmful, superstitions have recently been shown to have positive effects on stress levels, confidence, and ultimately, performance. However, it remains unclear how people conceive of superstitious behaviors, specifically,…

Scholars have paid little attention to the strategies used by parents of gifted children who learn in mixed-abilities classroom when interacting with their teachers. In this research we studied how parents of gifted children in mixed-ability classrooms position themselves with their children's teachers in conflicted situations. By using multiple…

Recent research has shown that a religious upbringing renders children receptive to ordinarily impossible outcomes, but the underlying mechanism for this effect remains unclear. Exposure to religious teachings might alter children's basic understanding of causality. Alternatively, religious exposure might only affect children's religious…

The ability to infer intentions from observed behavior and predict actions based on this inference, known as intention attribution (IA), has been hypothesized to be impaired in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The underlying neural processes, however, have not been conclusively determined. The aim of this study was to examine the…

Previous research shows that children effectively extract and utilize causal information, yet we find that adults doubt children's ability to understand complex mechanisms. Since adults themselves struggle to explain how everyday objects work, why expect more from children? Although remembering details may prove difficult, we argue that exposure…

Beliefs about the controllability of positive or negative events in the environment can shape learning throughout the lifespan. Previous research has shown that adults' learning is modulated by beliefs about the causal structure of the environment such that they update their value estimates to a lesser extent when the outcomes can be attributed to…

In two experiments, one hundred and sixty-two 6- to 8-year-olds were asked to reason counterfactually about events with different causal structures. All events involved overdetermined outcomes in which two different causal events led to the same outcome. In Experiment 1, children heard stories with either an ambiguous causal relation between…

Sleep problems in children with autism spectrum disorder are prevalent and persistent but also treatable. Little is known about how and why parents of such children seek help for sleep disturbance. Via an online survey (n = 244 respondents), we gathered information about parents' attributions about children's sleep problems and beliefs about…

Scant sociological attention has been given to the role of luck within social mobility/reproduction. This paper helps address this conceptual gap, drawing on insights from over 200 longitudinal interviews conducted with 20 working-class young people and 22 of their parents over an 11-year period, from age 10-21. We explore the potential…

As a causal attribution, attributing academic success to giftedness might influence students' academic achievement. According to previous studies, students' self-regulated learning and negative learning emotions may mediate the association between achievement attribution and academic achievement. Therefore, the present study employed structural…

We investigated how parents' attributions of blame/responsibility/internal locus for negative events happening to themselves and to their children were related to children's attributions about similar events in their own lives. In a sample of 145 families (including mother, father, and child aged 9-12 years; 73 boys), we tested for unique…

Students with specific learning difficulties (SpLD) often appear to experience poorer educational and occupational outcomes than their peers. It is important to consider how these outcomes may be perpetuated by stereotypes and stigma associated with SpLD. One hundred and fifty-four primary (elementary) school teachers from the United Kingdom were…

The study aimed to examine the longitudinal causal relationships of depressive moods, problematic mobile phone use, and negative school outcomes based on the cognitive-behavioral model among Korean adolescents. The changes within each construct over time were also explored. A total of 1,610 valid responses from three-year longitudinal data from…

Studies show that people with a learning disability (LD) are stigmatized. The study adopts the major tenets of the "Attribution Model of Reactions to Stigmas" (AMRS), which postulates that causal attributions to disability ("stigmas") are associated with affective responses that lead to behavioral outcomes. Adopting a…

This study's purpose was to investigate effects of 3 intervention approaches for building working memory (WM) and improving word-problem solving (WPS). Children with mathematics difficulties (n = 240; 7.51 years [SD = 0.33]) were randomized to 4 conditions: a control group, general WM training with contiguous math practice, WPS intervention…