Reviews of social comparison processes in school contexts have concluded that individual differences in propensity to compare with others are likely to be important in the classroom, but that there is a paucity of evidence testing this key proposition. To address this gap, we developed and validated a new measure of propensity to engage in…

Purpose: Using data from 1,868 children from the US, Australia, and Sweden who took a 10-word spelling test in kindergarten and a standardized spelling test in Grades 1, 2, and (except for the Australian children) Grade 4, we examined two questions. First, does the quality of a child's errors on the kindergarten test help predict later spelling…

This study aims to examine the relations and associations between gender, epistemic curiosity (EC), self-regulated learning (SRL), and attitudes toward e-learning in higher education students. The participants were 2438 (862 males, 1576 females) undergraduate students enrolled in a Turkish university. The regression analysis findings showed that…

Positive psychology (PP) is currently employing its modern research toolkit to examine how individual differences of hedonic (i.e. pursuing pleasure, fun, and painlessness) versus eudaimonic (i.e. pursuing meaning, self-worth, and growth) well-being motives play out against emotional and learning challenges or outcomes in life. Similarly oriented,…

The maintenance and escalation of intergroup conflicts have been explained by negative emotions and attitudes toward outgroup members. Considering that creative cognition entails the ability to generate diverse and new ideas, we sought to investigate whether creativity may contribute to overcoming negative emotions and attitudes associated with…

Background: Although research clearly demonstrates the importance of motivation in mathematics learning, relatively little is known about the developmental dynamics between different facets of mathematics motivation and performance, especially in the early years of schooling. Aims: In a longitudinal setting, we examined (1) how children's ability…

Classroom climate has been considered as an important factor influencing students' learning motivation, achievement and psychological and behavioural health in schools. With the data from German National Educational Panel Study and the latent profile approach, we explored students' perception of German classroom climate including learning and…

There are multivariate influences on the development of children's executive function throughout the lifespan and substantial individual differences can be seen as early as when children are 1 and 2 years of age. These individual differences are moderately stable throughout early childhood, but more research is needed to better understand their…

The frequency and contextual predictability of words have a fundamental role in determining "where" and "when" the eyes move during reading in both alphabetic and non-alphabetic languages. However, surprising little is known about the how the influence of these variables develops, although this is important for understanding…

Two studies examined factors that predicted children's tendencies to match objects versus relations across scenes when no instruction was given. Study 1 examined a) age and b) nationality as a proxy for cultural differences in experiences with relations. The results showed that Chinese and U.S. children across ages all showed an initial bias to…

Individual differences in emotional reactivity emerge early in development and predict important child outcomes. Unfortunately, methods used to assess these often fail to tap dynamic changes in emotion, obscuring nuanced relationships between maladaptive emotional reactivity and early internalizing psychopathology. We therefore explored the…

Stability is an important underlying assumption in any form of assessment-supported decision-making. Since early years development is frequently described as unstable, the concept plays a central role in the discussion surrounding early years assessment. This paper describes stability as a set of assumptions about the way individual scores change…

Comprehension substantially benefits from attending to, thinking about, and mentally representing the sources of any presented information. Such processes require mental effort and unfortunately people do not always engage in such activities. The current article presents a nascent, evolving model of discourse comprehension that formalizes…

In the present study, we tested the hypotheses that: a) there are individual differences in secondary students' conceptual and procedural fraction knowledge, and b) these differences are predicted by students' approach (deep vs. surface) to mathematics learning. We used two instruments developed and evaluated for the purposes of the study which…

Willingness to communicate (WTC) used to be studied as a relatively stable, trait-like predisposition; however, recently attention has shifted to the more dynamic, state-like components of WTC. This research investigates variability and stability in state WTC, particularly focusing on within-person variability, which may lead to stable…