Task-irrelevant background sound can disrupt performance of visually based cognitive tasks. The cross-modal breakdown of attentional selectivity in the context of reading was addressed using analyses of eye movements. Moreover, the study addressed whether task-sensitivity to distraction via background speech on reading was modulated by the…

Diminished attending to faces may contribute to the impairments in emotion recognition and expression in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The current study evaluated the acceptability, feasibility, and preliminary efficacy of an attention modification intervention designed to attenuate deficits in facial emotion recognition (FER). During the…

Regulatory focus may shape the manner in which students perceive and respond to learning environments and then further influence their attitudes and behaviors. In the current study, 1487 adolescents in China were surveyed to illuminate the relationship between regulatory focus and learning engagement. The results showed that promotion focus was a…

This article presents a meta-analytic review of the relation between executive function and reading comprehension. Results (N = 6,673) supported a moderate positive association between executive function and reading comprehension (r = 0.36). Moderator analyses suggested that correlations between executive function and reading comprehension did not…

The present study aimed to investigate early interrelationships between temperament, short-term memory (STM) and working memory (WM), while also relating them to incipient anxious traits in a sample of 4-7-year-olds. Preschoolers were evaluated using verbal and visuospatial STM and WM tasks, while parental reports were used to assess children's…

The aim of this study was to gain additional knowledge about the asynchrony phenomenon in developmental dyslexia, especially when spatial selective attention is manipulated. Adults with developmental dyslexia and non-impaired readers underwent two experimental tasks, one including alphabetic stimuli (pre-lexical consonant-vowel syllables) and the…

Prior research has used many variants of "be creative" or brainstorm instructions to enhance creativity in a variety of tasks. However, differences in instruction wording may lead to differences in instruction interpretation, and varying the placement of instructions before or after a written problem description may lead to differences…

Purpose: This study examined whether older adults remain perceptually flexible when presented with ambiguities in speech in the absence of lexically disambiguating information. We expected older adults to show less perceptual learning when top-down information was not available. We also investigated whether individual differences in executive…

We evaluated whether narrating anger-provoking events promoted learning from those events, as compared with other responses to anger, and whether the effectiveness of narrative depended on age. In addition, we tested relations between anger reduction and learning and, in a subset of participants, between narrative quality and learning. A sample of…

In this month's interview, Kappan's editor talks with developmental psychologist and Northwestern University professor Emma K. Adam about her recent research into stress, stress hormones (particularly cortisol), sleep, and learning. High school students' self-reported stress levels during the day are closely aligned with their measured levels of…

The study examines the concurrent and longitudinal associations between ratings-based measures (parents, secondary caregivers, and observers) and performance-based measures of focused attention in toddlers aged 30 (n = 147), 36 (n = 127), and 42 months (n = 107). Parents and secondary caregivers rated focused attention behaviours using the…

Purpose: We aim to identify the possible sources for age-related differences in the perception of emotion in speech, focusing on the distinct roles of semantics (words) and prosody (tone of speech) and their interaction. Method: We implement the Test for Rating of Emotions in Speech (Ben-David, Multani, Shakuf, Rudzicz, & van Lieshout, 2016).…

The main goals of the current study are (1) college students' cyberloafing behaviors during a lab session, (2) reasons that students cyberloaf, and (3) possible solutions to prevent this behavior from the students' perspectives. A total of 184 students registered for lab hours at a public university in Turkey were recruited to participate in this…

How do emerging adults experience mindfulness and compassion? The goals of this study were to (1) evaluate the effectiveness of a mindfulness curricular intervention and (2) examine how students interpreted their experience. We delivered a mindfulness curriculum to 24 college students who meditated twice a week for 7 weeks. Students completed a…

The aim of the study was to describe student profiles associated with educational achievement from four sets of personal variables: psychological, academic, health, and technology use. A representative sample of middle school students from Baja California, Mexico, was given an ad hoc questionnaire and academic results were obtained from a…