Children produce their first gestures before their first words, and their first gesture+word sentences before their first word+word sentences. These gestural accomplishments have been found not only to predate linguistic milestones, but also to predict them. Findings of this sort suggest that gesture itself might be playing a role in the…

The authors examined the association between alcohol consumption and aggression from a personality trait perspective with 92 self-identified Hispanic college students. They partially replicated a study by Quigley, Corbett, and Tedeshi, which examined the relationships between desired image of power, alcohol expectancies, and alcohol-related…

Purpose: The purpose of research is to attempt to determine to what extent the salary level of teachers working in public educational systems is connected with the trend towards privatization considering that privatization has become nowadays a prominent phenomenon in educational systems around the world. Design/methodology/approach: A secondary…

This study examined the predictors of belief bias in a formal reasoning paradigm (a syllogistic reasoning task) and myside bias in two informal reasoning paradigms (an argument generation task and an experiment evaluation task). Neither cognitive ability nor thinking dispositions predicted myside bias, but both cognitive ability and thinking…

Accurate predictions of future reconviction, including those for violent crimes, have been shown to be greatly aided by the use of formal risk assessment instruments. However, it is unclear as to whether these instruments would also be predictive in a sample of offenders with intellectual disabilities. In this study, the authors have shown that…

This study examined stability and malleability in the callous-unemotional (CU) traits of young boys (M age = 6.29 years, SD = 1.55) referred to clinics with conduct problems who underwent a parent-training intervention. In contrast to the high stability predicted, CU scores dropped posttreatment for a subset of the sample. However, as…

Thirty fourth-grade students participated in an extended intervention previously successful in fostering skills of scientific investigation and inference, notably control of variables (COV). The intervention was similarly successful for a majority of students in the present study, enabling them to isolate the three causal and two noncausal…

This article discusses how to make process use an independent variable in evaluation practice: the purposeful means of building an organization's capacity to conduct and use evaluations in the long run. The goal of evaluation capacity building (ECB) is to strengthen and sustain effective program evaluation practices through a number of activities:…

Educators and policymakers often believe that immigrant children perform better in school if they and their families culturally assimilate and assume the characteristics prevalent in the dominant mainstream society. Therefore, ethnic retention (i.e., immigrant families and people of color embracing their own ethnic values, artifacts, and…

Involvement has long been theoretically specified as a crucial factor determining the persuasive impact of messages. In social judgment theory, ego-involvement makes people more resistant to persuasion, whereas in dual-process models, high-involvement people are susceptible to persuasion when argument quality is high. It is argued that these…

The hypothesis that anxiety sensitivity (AS) is a risk factor for panic genesis has obtained compelling support, but the clinical/practical importance of AS in panic genesis has been questioned. In addition, the association between panic experience and AS increase has not been clearly demonstrated. Through this 1-year longitudinal study among…

The greatest limitation in establishing causality in observational studies on the effect of financial aid is the presence of endogeneity or selection bias associated with aid status. To control for this statistical confoundedness that besets the research corpus to date, this study estimates the effect of financial aid on freshmen retention at a…

Adolescents spend a large proportion of their day in school or pursuing school-related activities. While the primary purpose of school is the academic development of students, its effects on adolescents are far broader, also encompassing their physical and mental health, safety, civic engagement, and social development. Further, its effects on all…

This study examines Linguistic Competence in English Language (LCE) as a general indicator of Communicative Competence. A test and a questionnaire were administered to 1838 undergraduate freshmen from five major institutes of higher education in Aguascalientes, Mexico. The results of the test are analysed in their association with main features of…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify and measure the perceptions and attitudes of students regarding the classroom performance system (CPS). Design/methodology/approach: The paper reviews a range of recently published (1993-2006) works on pedagogy and educational technology. A survey methodology was utilized to measure students'…