This article aims to account for students' assessments of the plausibility and applicability of analogical explanations, and individual differences in these assessments, by analyzing properties of students' underlying knowledge systems. We developed a model of explanation and change in explanation focusing on knowledge elements that provide a…

Multilevel modeling was used to address the longitudinal stability of standard scores (SSs) measuring intellectual ability for children with Williams syndrome (WS). Participants were 40 children with genetically confirmed WS who completed the Kaufman Brief Intelligence Test--Second Edition (KBIT-2; A. S. Kaufman & N. L. Kaufman, 2004) 4-7…

Accuracy for a second target (T2) is reduced when it is presented within 500 ms of a first target (T1) in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP)--an attentional blink (AB). There are reliable individual differences in the magnitude of the AB. Recent evidence has shown that the attentional approach that an individual typically adopts during a…

Background: High school and college students demonstrate a verbal, or textual, advantage whereby beginning algebra problems in story format are easier to solve than matched equations (Koedinger & Nathan, 2004). Adding diagrams to the stories may further facilitate solution (Hembree, 1992; Koedinger & Terao, 2002). However, diagrams may not…

Nearly 80% of children in the United States have at least 1 sibling, indicating that the birth of a baby sibling is a normative ecological transition for most children. Many clinicians and theoreticians believe the transition is stressful, constituting a developmental crisis for most children. Yet, a comprehensive review of the empirical…

Objective: This article first summarizes key research findings from the Pittsburgh Youth Study from 1987 to the present, and focuses on delinquency in 1,517 young men who have been followed up from late childhood into their 20s. Second, the article addresses how indicators of self-control prospectively predict later offending, and whether the…

In their commentary, D. W. Johnson, Johnson, and Roseth (2012) provided some laudatory statements about our article, but they also expressed a number of concerns. The concerns focus on the following issues: types and definitions of competition, our choice of control group, the nature of performance-approach and performance-avoidance goals, the…

In 3 studies, we tested the hypothesis that the higher ranked an individual's group is, the less cooperative the facial expression of that person is judged to be. Study 1 established this effect among business school deans, with observers rating individuals from higher ranked schools as appearing less cooperative, despite lacking prior knowledge…

This study was conducted to explore any existent relationships between student persistence and participation in a college-success course in the for-profit arena. Further, it sought to determine whether students' perception of a college-success course related to persistence, and whether components of the course served as predictors of persistence.…

This paper describes a three-step method for the construction of codebooks meant for analyzing ePortfolio content. The first step produces a prototype based on qualitative analysis of very different ePortfolios from the same course. During the second step, the initial version of the codebook is tested on a larger sample and subsequently revised.…

This article examines standards which would define a teacher who is good enough to teach children. A good teacher should understand the development of learners. To ensure inclusive learning environments, the teacher should use understanding of individual differences and diverse cultures. The teacher should also collaborate with others to develop…

The purpose of this mixed research study was to examine mentoring experiences specific to grade span through the perspective of principals, mentors, and mentees. An instrument containing items on demographics, administrative support, and mentoring program components was administered to first-year teachers (n = 998), mentors (n = 791), and…

Previous research on sensation seeking (SS) was dominated by a variable-oriented approach indicating that SS level has a linear relation with a host of problem behaviors. Our aim was to provide a person-oriented methodology--a probabilistic clustering--that enables examination of both inter- and intra-individual differences in not only the level,…

Background: The spontaneous recoding of visual stimuli into a phonological code to aid short-term retention has been associated with progress in learning to read (Palmer, 2000b). Aim: This study examined whether there was a comparable association with the development of writing skills. Sample: One hundred eight children (64 males) in the second…

Children whose parents are more highly educated enjoy greater age-linked gains in cognitive abilities and academic achievement. Different researchers have typically focused on different outcomes, and the extent to which parental education relates to multiple child outcomes via a single developmental pathway has received little empirical attention.…