Background: Examinees may not make enough effort when responding to test items if the assessment has no consequence for them. These disengaged responses can be problematic in low-stakes, large-scale assessments because they can bias item parameter estimates. However, the amount of bias, and whether this bias is similar across administrations, is…

As researchers in the social sciences, we are often interested in studying not directly observable constructs through assessments and questionnaires. But even in a well-designed and well-implemented study, rapid-guessing behavior may occur. Under rapid-guessing behavior, a task is skimmed shortly but not read and engaged with in-depth. Hence, a…

The development of the ability to anticipate--as manifested by preparatory actions and neural activation related to the expectation of an upcoming stimulus--may play a key role in the ontogeny of cognitive skills more broadly. This preregistered study examined anticipatory brain potentials and behavioral responses (reaction time; RT) to…

Understanding language requires the ability to compose the meanings of words into phrase and sentence meanings. Formal theories in semantics have framed the hypothesis that all instances of meaning composition, irrespective of the syntactic and semantic properties of the expressions involved, boil down to a unique formal operation, that is, the…

The present study compares native and nonnative processing of Spanish active and passive sentences. The nonnative speakers were tested before and after receiving processing instruction on the Spanish passive. The native speakers were tested once and provide a baseline for comparisons. We measured accuracy and response time to select the correct…

Use of prosocial language enhances human cooperation and harmony. Previous research has shown that talking about helping, sharing and giving to others creates positive impression on others, by which individuals and governments gain public approval. So far, the value judgement of approval and disapproval in terms of prosocial or antisocial has not…

Conflict adaptation is key in how children self-regulate and assert cognitive control in a given situation compared with a previous experience. In the current study, we analyzed event-related potentials (ERPs) to identify age-related differences in conflict adaptation. Participants of different ages (5-year-old children, 10-year-old children, and…

Objective: The study investigates behavioural, academic, cognitive, and motivational aspects of functioning in school-age children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) with and without an executive function deficit (EFD). Method: Children with ADHD - EFD (n = 22) and children with ADHD + EFD (n = 26) were compared on aspects of…

Certain characteristics of a Taylor (1965) competitive reaction time task contribute to a lack of awareness of contingencies that exist between two aggressors. The opponent's contingent response to the subject's specific shock setting may be obscured by the reaction time competition, thus concealing the matching contingency. Nine separate steps…