We tested the theoretically driven hypotheses that children's orthographic and semantic learning are associated with their word reading and reading comprehension skills, even when orthographic and semantic knowledge are taken into account. A sample of 139 English-speaking Grade 3 children completed a learning task in which they read stories about…

Based on the framework of interest, studies have shown that situational interest possesses strong motivation potential for students in physical education. Understanding how teachers can use situational interest in a classroom context is critical to motivate students. However, such investigations have been exclusively conducted in the United States…

Adolescence is characterized by increasing incidence of health risk behaviors, including experimentation with drugs and alcohol. To fill the gap in our understanding of the associations between risky decision-making and health risk behaviors, we investigated associations between laboratory-based risky decision-making using the Stoplight task and…

This research article reports on two correlational studies that examined the notion of "optimized functioning." Optimized functioning, introduced in a recent published study, offers an alternative approach into the understanding of optimization. Optimized functioning is proposed to consist of four distinctive components: personal…

Purpose: The primary purpose of this study is to assess the predicting role of job characteristics on job performance. Dimensions in the job characteristics construct are skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy and feedback. Further, work involvement is tested as a mediator in the hypothesized link. Design/methodology/approach: A…

In a series of 4 experiments, we tested children's understanding that the causes of their actions must necessarily be attributed to information known prior to (i.e., "pre-action" information), rather than after (i.e., "post-action" information), the completion of their actions. For example, children were shown a dog, asked…

The authors tested the dynamics of collective action tendencies of student teams when trying to accomplish a shared goal, with a focus on the impact of member ties and team member interaction and emotional responses on team performance. The results show the direct and indirect impacts of both positive and negative group emotions on the student…

Emerging evidence suggests that children's sensitivity to suprasegmental phonology such as stress and timing (i.e., prosodic sensitivity) contributes to reading. The primary goal of this study was to investigate pathways of the relation of prosodic sensitivity to reading (word reading and reading comprehension) using data from 370 first-grade…

The present study assessed the impact of sample size on the power and fit of structural equation modeling applied to functional brain connectivity hypotheses. The data consisted of time-constrained minimum norm estimates of regional brain activity during performance of a reading task obtained with magnetoencephalography. Power analysis was first…

We examined the developmental relations of phonological awareness (PA) and rapid automatized naming (RAN) with reading in a cross-sectional study with 874 Spanish children from Grades 2 to 6. Our main prediction was that the RAN-reading relationship would decrease due to a gradual change in reading strategy, from serial decoding to sight word…

This study investigated the longitudinal relation between children's theory of mind and their metacognitive knowledge with a special focus on the impact of language on this relation. Measures of theory-of-mind understanding and metamemory knowledge were assessed in 133 3-year-old children at 4 measurement points separated by half-year intervals.…

Research Findings: This study examined concurrent associations between family sociodemographic risk, self-regulation, and early literacy and mathematics in young children from Azores, Portugal (N = 186). Family sociodemographic risk was indexed by low maternal education, low family income, and low occupational status. Behavioral aspects of…

Numerous studies have shown that spreadsheets used in companies often have errors which may affect the quality of the decisions made with these tools. Many businesses are unaware or choose to ignore the risks associated with spreadsheet use. The intent of this study was to learn more about the characteristics of spreadsheet end user developers,…

Motivated by cognitive theories of graph comprehension, this study systematically manipulated characteristics of a line graph description task in a speaking test in ways to mitigate the influence of graph familiarity, a potential source of construct-irrelevant variance. It extends Xi (2005), which found that the differences in holistic scores on…