It is generally assumed that bare numerals (e.g., "three") have two readings: the "exactly" and the "at least" reading. It has been a matter of debate whether one of these two readings is derived from the other pragmatically. To shed light on this question research has aimed at characterizing the processing demands…

We provide evidence of validity for a newly developed diagnostic competence model of operation sense, by both (a) describing the theoretically substantiated development of the competence model in close association with its use within a large-scale formative assessment and (b) providing empirical evidence for the theoretically described cognitive…

In the past decades, income inequality has risen in most developed countries. There is growing interest among economists in international comparisons of economic and educational mobility. This is aided by the availability of internationally comparable, large-scale data. The present paper aims to make three contributions. First, we introduce the…

Although informal learning environments have been studied extensively, ours is one of the first studies to quantitatively assess the impact of learning in botanical gardens on students' cognitive achievement. We observed a group of 10th graders participating in a one-day educational intervention on climate change implemented in a botanical garden.…

In multiple-list learning, retrieval during learning has been suggested to improve recall of the single lists by enhancing list discrimination and, at test, reducing interference. Using electrophysiological, oscillatory measures of brain activity, we examined to what extent retrieval during learning facilitates list encoding. Subjects studied 5…

Cognitive ability tests are widely used in organizations around the world because they have high predictive validity in selection contexts. Although these tests typically measure several subdomains, testing is usually carried out for a single subdomain at a time. This can be ineffective when the subdomains assessed are highly correlated. This…

I analyse low and high achieving children's competences regarding pattern and structure at the beginning of formal schooling comparatively. The aim is to evaluate the range of school starters' early structure sense. The results suggest overall high pre-instructional competences which, however, differ strongly between the mathematical high and low…

To pursue goal directed behavior, the cognitive system must be shielded against interference from irrelevant information. Aside from the online adjustment of cognitive control widely discussed in the literature, an additional mechanism of preventive goal shielding is suggested that circumvents irrelevant information from being processed in the…

A large number of studies have reported average performance differences in favor of males in mental rotation tasks. However, it is still unclear to what extent the magnitude of the sex differences varies across age, and whether the differences increase with age. In this study, we reanalyzed data from a cross-sectional investigation of N = 1624…

Individual differences in academic success were investigated in a geographically defined whole-population sample of very preterm children with a gestational age of less than 32 weeks or a birth weight of less than 1500 gm. The sample consisted of 264 very preterm children (75.6% of German-speaking survivors) and 264 controls matched for gender,…