A sample of 3783 11- to 16-year-old secondary school pupils completed the Astley-Francis Scale of Attitude toward Theistic Faith and the abbreviated form of the Junior Eysenck Personality Questionnaire Revised together with information on personal religious practice (prayer), public religious practice (attendance) and religious identity (secular,…

This study was performed to identify the patterns and mechanisms of the development of personal strength of bereaved older adults over a 4-year period after spousal death. The findings showed that while bereaved older adults, on average, experienced a moderate level of personal strength at 6 months post-spousal death with a slight increase over a…

Teenage drivers with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are at considerable risk for negative driving outcomes, including traffic citations, accidents, and injuries. Presently, no efficacious psychosocial interventions exist for teenage drivers with ADHD. The Supporting a Teen's Effective Entry to the Roadway (STEER) program is a…

The principal aim of this paper is to contribute to the pursuit of evaluating pragmatic language competence in preschool years by observation-based data. Initially, the relations between age and language development measured as mean length of utterance (MLU) and three dialogue skills are described. The occurrences of "focus on the dialogue…

Cognitive load theory (CLT) is one of the most important theories in educational psychology, a highly effective guide for the design of multimedia and other learning materials. This edited volume brings together the most prolific researchers from around the world who study various aspects of cognitive load to discuss its current theoretical as…

Behavioral and economic theories have long maintained that actions are chosen so as to minimize demands for exertion or work, a principle sometimes referred to as the "law of less work". The data supporting this idea pertain almost entirely to demands for physical effort. However, the same minimization principle has often been assumed also to…

A self-report measure of the emotional and behavioral reactions to intrusive thoughts was developed. The article presents data that confirm the stability, reliability, and validity of the new seven-item measure. Emotional and behavioral reactions to intrusions emerged as separate factors on the Emotional and Behavioral Reactions to Intrusions…

This article presents a dual system model (DSM) of decision making under risk and uncertainty according to which the value of a gamble is a combination of the values assigned to it independently by the affective and deliberative systems. On the basis of research on dual process theories and empirical research in Hsee and Rottenstreich (2004) and…

Multitasking performance is relevant in everyday life and job analyses highlight the influence of multitasking over several diverse occupations. Intelligence is the best single predictor of overall job performance and it is also related to individual differences in multitasking. However, it has been shown that working memory capacity (WMC) is…

A local processing bias, referred to as "weak central coherence," has been postulated to underlie key aspects of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Little research has examined whether individual differences in this cognitive style can be found in typical development, independent of intelligence, and how local processing relates to executive control.…

The central question in this study is whether individual variability in children's cortisol levels and wellbeing at childcare can be explained by indices of quality of care and child characteristics. Participants were 71 children from childcare homes and 45 children from childcare centers in the age range of 20-40 months. In both types of settings…

Attentional skills and home environment were examined as predictors of looking patterns during television viewing by 70 48- to 91-month-old children from low income families. Looking to the television was assessed in conditions without distractors and with continuous distractors. Looking patterns during television viewing reflected attentional…

Two Afro Caribbean immigrants share our individual experiences of navigating the United States (US) academy, and the strengths we derived in the process. We explore the questions: How do we make meaning of our experiences as members of the academe? What accounts for our ability to perform, develop, and grow as scholars in the US? We used the…

Multidimensional item response models are usually implemented to model the relationship between item responses and two or more traits of interest. We show how multidimensional multinomial logit item response models can also be used to account for individual differences in response style. This is done by specifying a factor-analytic model for…

Although fear conditioning is an important psychological construct implicated in behavioral and emotional problems, little is known about how it develops in early childhood. Using a differential, partial reinforcement conditioning paradigm, this longitudinal study assessed skin conductance conditioned responses in 200 children at ages 3, 4, 5, 6,…