Often young children already have some ideas about what they want to do in the future. Using data from a large UK cohort study, we investigated the individual determinants of seven-year-old children's aspirations, controlling for parental socio-economic background and parental involvement in learning. At age 7, not all children's aspirations were…

Aim: This study investigated prediction of separate cognitive abilities at the age of 5 years by cognitive development at the ages of both 2 and 3 years, and the agreement between these measurements, in very preterm children. Methods: Preterm children (n=102; 44 males; 58 females) with a gestational age less than 30 weeks and/or birthweight less…

Traditionally, English reading has been thought of as an approach used to acquire language proficiency rather than as a way to understand information and elicit thoughtfulness. Although a positive correlation has been found between motivation and engagement, no study has yet been undertaken to discover the relationship between motivation and…

Working memory updating (WMU) has been identified as a cognitive function of prime importance for everyday tasks and has also been found to be a significant predictor of higher mental abilities. Yet, little is known about the constituent processes of WMU. We suggest that operations required in a typical WMU task can be decomposed into 3 major…

We examined whether strategies of memorization, transfer through elaboration, and metacognition accounted for reading, science, and mathematics achievement across 34 countries. 158,848 fifteen-year-olds completed a reading literacy test and a questionnaire. Of these students, 88,401 completed a science test, and 88,590 completed a mathematics…