Background: Social perception is an important skill. One assessment that is commonly used to assess social perception abilities is The Awareness of Social Inference Test (TASIT). The only normative data available for this test are for Australian younger adults. Despite no normative data being available for British adults, the test is widely used…

Dual process theory proposes two distinct reasoning processes in humans, an intuitive style that is rapid and automatic and a deliberative style that is more effortful. However, no study to date has specifically examined these reasoning styles in relation to the autism spectrum. The present studies investigated deliberative and intuitive reasoning…

Not much is known about how people comprehend ironic utterances, and to date, most studies have simply compared processing of ironic versus non-ironic statements. A key aspect of the graded salience hypothesis, distinguishing it from other accounts (such as the standard pragmatic view and direct access view), is that it predicts differences…

Adolescents with dyslexia exhibit well-established impairments in executive abilities. The Wisconsin card sorting test (WCST) is an executive test that yields surprisingly inconsistent results with this population. The current study aimed to shed light on the contradictory findings in the literature regarding the performance levels by individuals…

We compared the original deck-based model of advantageous decision making assessed with the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) with a trial-based approach across behavioral and physiological outcomes in 33 younger adults (15 men, 18 women; 22.2 [plus or minus] 3.7 years of age). One administration of the IGT with simultaneous measurement of skin conductance…

In two experimental and exploratory studies, we wanted to test the differentiated effects on preschoolers with externalizing behavior (EB) of two short-term social information processing (SIP) and Theory of Mind (ToM) training sessions, in comparison with typically developing (TD) preschoolers or with preschoolers with EB whom didn't receive…

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…

Mental models are basic cognitive constructs that are central for understanding phenomena of the world and predicting future events. Our comparison of two analysis approaches, SMD and QFCA, for measuring externalized mental models reveals different levels of abstraction and different perspectives. The advantages of the SMD include possibilities…

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…

According to dual-process accounts of thinking, belief-based responses on reasoning tasks are generated as default but can be intervened upon in favor of logical responding, given sufficient time, effort, or cognitive resource. In this article, we present the results of 5 experiments in which participants were instructed to evaluate the…

Recent developments in digital technology have resulted in the unprecedented uptake of digital technology engagement as a leisure-time pursuit across the age span. This has resulted in the speculation that such use of digital technology is responsible for changes in cognition and learning behaviour. This study investigated two groups of…

Traditional comparisons of test score means identify group differences in broad academic areas, but fail to provide substantive description of how the groups differ on the specific cognitive attributes required for success in the academic area. The rule space method (RSM) allows for group comparisons at the cognitive attribute level, which…

This study examines whether MidYIS and YELLIS cognitive ability tests (CATs) are appropriate methods for the identification of giftedness in Design and Technology. A key rationale for the study was whether CATs and able to identify those students with the aptitudes considered of importance to identifying giftedness in Design and Technology and…

Two studies investigated the functional equivalence of three different scoring systems used to assess the child's ability to understand and carry out multiplicative classification tasks. All three scoring criteria produced reliable and homogeneous tests. Their factor matrices were similar, and the corresponding factor structures were invariant…

A theory and test of cross-cultural transportability of measurement were constructed on a logico-mathematical basis regarding the deductive measures and on a basis of syntactic reduction and Latin-based vocabulary regarding the linguistic measuring medium. A pilot study was administered in Spain, France, and the United States. (Author/PN)