The choice of cortisol sampling times in early childhood studies varies widely. Given that recommendations on sampling protocols are largely based on adults, the present study aimed to broaden current knowledge by examining how reliably cortisol measures obtained at different daytimes would reveal between-individual differences in toddlers'…

Current theories of loneliness posit that biases in social information processing play a key role in the development and maintenance of loneliness. However, this assumption has rarely been tested in longitudinal research in adolescence. The current study concentrated on two constructs associated with such biases, that is, fear of negative…

This study compares a problem-solving account of discovery through writing, which attributes discovery to strategic rhetorical planning and assumes discovery is associated with better quality text, to a dual-process account, which attributes discovery to the combined effect of 2 conflicting processes with opposing relationships to text quality.…

Background: The goal of this study was to examine the relationship between drinking motives and interpretation bias (interpreting ambiguous stimuli in an alcohol-related way) in problematic drinkers with and without mild to borderline intellectual disability (MBID). Method: Participants (N = 178) were divided into 4 groups based on severity of…

Lexical access is a core component of word processing. In order to produce or comprehend a word, language users must access word forms in their mental lexicon. However, despite its involvement in both tasks, previous research has often studied lexical access in either production or comprehension alone. Therefore, it is unknown to which extent…

In this article, the change in examinee effort during an assessment, which we will refer to as persistence, is modeled as an effect of item position. A multilevel extension is proposed to analyze hierarchically structured data and decompose the individual differences in persistence. Data from the 2009 Program of International Student Achievement…

The present study aims to examine relations between number representations and various sources of individual differences within early stages of development of number representations. The mental number line has been found to develop from a logarithmic to a more linear representation. Sources under investigation are counting skills and executive…

The notion of complexity--as in "education is a complex system"--has two different meanings. On the one hand, there is the epistemic connotation, with "Complex" meaning "difficult to understand, hard to control". On the other hand, complex has a technical meaning, referring to systems composed of many interacting…

As a part of classroom management, teachers face the question of how and where to seat their students. However, it is far from clear what considerations teachers have when making seating arrangements. Therefore, in this study seating arrangement considerations from 50 teachers in grades 4-6 of elementary school were assessed. In Phase 1, teachers…

As adolescent overweight has become a widespread problem in the developed world, it is timely to understand commonalities underlying dietary practices across countries. This study examines whether consumption of fruits and vegetables and fatty foods among adolescents in different countries is related to the same individual difference and social…

We explored the genetic background of individual differences in dynamic measures of verbal learning ability in children, using a Dutch version of the Auditory Verbal Learning Test (AVLT). Nine-year-old twin pairs (N = 112 pairs) were recruited from the Netherlands Twin Register. When possible, an older sibling between 10 and 14 years old…

Purpose: Teacher communities might create excellent conditions for teacher learning in schools, such as a teacher dialogue. The way teachers perceive and interpret these conditions seems to be crucial for their effects on learning. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to develop and test the Sense of Community in School Scale (SCSS).…

Randomized response (RR) is a well-known method for measuring sensitive behavior. Yet this method is not often applied because: (i) of its lower efficiency and the resulting need for larger sample sizes which make applications of RR costly; (ii) despite its privacy-protection mechanism the RR design may not be followed by every respondent; and…