Search

"Mindsets (or implicit theories) are people's lay beliefs about the nature of human attributes, such as intelligence or personality". Individuals with a fixed mindset believe that intelligence is an unchangeable trait, whereas those with a growth mindset think of it as a malleable quality that can be increased and developed. This study explored the relationships among growth mindset, wellbeing, and performance in a sample of 1,240 students from a multi-campus private university located in 18 states across Mexico. Our results indicated that individuals who scored high in growth (vs. fixed) mindset showed increased levels of wellbeing and also performed better in school. Furthermore, we found that wellbeing mediated the relationship between growth mindset and performance and that the effect of growth mindset on grades was higher among younger students. These findings have interesting implications for psychology and education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Evidence on how science-related affect and competency factors predict environmental awareness. • Suggestions why increases in science interest do not necessarily reflect a genuine interest in learning science. • PISA 2006/2015 comparisons within/between 2 Asian countries reveal divergent predictive trends. • These trends may reflect antithetic instruction approaches preventing genuine learning interest. Abstract Utilizing PISA 2006/2015 datasets for Japan and Taiwan, the multi-group analysis results show significant predictive increases in science interest and scientific competency, and for science interest and environmental awareness; however, revealed significant predictive decreases for science enjoyment and scientific competency, and for science enjoyment and environmental awareness between PISA cycles for both countries. Results signal divergent predictive trends regarding how interest and enjoyment impact students’ scientific competency, which may reflect instructional approaches that impede students from experiencing genuine interest in learning science. Why these results should sound an alarm to science and environment educators and policy makers is also forwarded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Translation instruction is very important in specialized English teaching activities. The effectiveness of current specialized English translation instruction (SETI) in mainland China, however, is unclear because university students have become less interested in, and less confident when doing, English translation. This study investigated the effects of online cooperative translation on EFL students’ levels of interest and self-efficacy with respect to specialized English translation through a questionnaire, focus group interview, interaction data analysis, and pre-test and post-test on 48 second-year college students in China majoring in educational technology. The results showed that online cooperative translations could significantly increase student interest and self-efficacy in specialized English translation. In cooperative translation, student engagement was significantly and linearly correlated with their interest and self-efficacy in translation. We conclude with recommendations on reforming current SETI practices in mainland China's universities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Curiosity has received increasing attention in the educational literature, yet empirical investigations have been limited by inconsistent conceptualizations and the use of curiosity synonymously with other constructs, particularly interest. The purpose of this review is to critically examine the dimensionality, definitions, and measures of curiosity within educational settings, and address the boundaries between curiosity and interest. A systematic review of 39 articles from 2003 to 2013 revealed a reliance on self-report measures, a focus on curiosity as a personality trait, and definitions characterized by four themes, the most common of which were curiosity as a need for knowledge or information, and curiosity as a motivator of exploratory behavior. The overlap and relations between curiosity and interest are discussed, and it is proposed that an examination of (a) the role of knowledge, (b) goals and outcomes, and (c) stability and malleability provide a basis for differentiating curiosity and interest according to their essential characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article empirically tests a previously developed theoretical framework for mathematics identity based on students' beliefs. The study employs data from more than 9,000 college calculus students across the United States to build a robust structural equation model. While it is generally thought that students' beliefs about their own competence in mathematics directly impact their identity as a "math person," findings indicate that students' self-perceptions related to competence and performance have an indirect effect on their mathematics identity, primarily by association with students' interest and external recognition in mathematics. Thus, the model indicates that students' competence and performance beliefs are not sufficient for their mathematics identity development, and it highlights the roles of interest and recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although both conscientiousness and domain-specific interest are believed to be major determinants of academic effort, they have rarely been brought together in empirical studies. In the present research, it was hypothesized that both interest and conscientiousness uniquely predict academic effort and statistically interact with each other to predict academic effort. In 4 studies with 2,557, 415, 1,025, and 1,531 students, respectively, conscientiousness and interest meaningfully and uniquely predicted academic effort. In addition, conscientiousness interacted with interest in a compensatory pattern, indicating that conscientiousness is especially important when a student finds a school subject uninteresting and that domain-specific interest plays a particularly important role for students low in conscientiousness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: It has become common practice for people to multitask with electronic devices in everyday situations. We examined the effects of interrupting participants with instant messages while they watched a video presentation in a situation that resembled commonplace events such as a business meeting, a training presentation, or a classroom lecture. We compared them to participants who were not interrupted. We also investigated how interest in the topics presented affected learning. Results showed that interruptions reduced learning, by a small but statistically significant margin, which is consistent with the findings of similar studies. Importantly, interest level was as strong a predictor of learning as being interrupted, although interest did not moderate the effect of interruptions. Results showed that interruptions are disruptive but perhaps not as much as is commonly believed. The results also highlight the importance of studying individual difference factors, such as interest levels, in conjunction with experimental manipulations, when assessing the effects of multitasking. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The purpose of this study was to test a model linking interest, engagement, and performance. The study assessed three types of situational interest (triggered, maintained-feeling, and maintained-value), behavioral engagement, behavioral disaffection, and performance in Spanish language classes. These variables were assessed in the classroom over a nine-month period on a sample of 565 Spanish secondary students aged 12 to 17 years (mean age = 13.78 years; SD = 1.14). A series of structural equation models revealed that the three types of situational interest significantly predicted engagement, disaffection, and performance; engagement and disaffection also predicted performance; as hypothesized, engagement and disaffection mediated the effects of situational interest on academic performance. To conclude, the implications of these findings are discussed in the light of current theory of interest and educational intervention programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research on negation has demonstrated that while readers are aware that this text construction is difficult, they seem to be able to do little to improve their comprehension. The present research evaluated whether a change in typeface could improve comprehension and metacomprehension of negation. Results indicated that while readers were aware that placing a word in bold typeface should attract their attention to that item, and therefore improve their comprehension, comprehension did not improve differentially for negation presented in bold. Additionally, readers' awareness of the necessity of attention to the bold component was not specific to negative sentences. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

After more than 100 years of interest and study, knowledge transfer remains among the most challenging, contentious, and important issues for both psychology and education. In this article, we review and discuss many of the more important ideas and findings from the existing research and attempt to bridge this body of work with the exciting new research directions suggested by the following articles. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

While it was initially thought that attention was space-based, more recent work has shown that attention can also be object-based, in that observers find it easier to attend to different parts of the same object than to different parts of different objects. Such studies have shown that attention more easily spreads throughout an object than between objects. However, it is not known to what extent attention can be confined to just part of an object and to what extent attending to part of an object necessarily causes the entire object to be attended. We have investigated this question in the context of the multiple object tracking paradigm in which subjects are shown a scene containing a number of identical moving objects and asked to mentally track a subset of them, the targets, while not tracking the remainder, the distractors. Previous work has shown that joining each target to a distractor by a solid connector so that each target-distractor pair forms a single physical object, a technique known as target-distractor merging, makes it hard to track the targets, suggesting that attention cannot be restricted to just parts of objects. However, in that study the target-distractor pairs continuously changed length, which in itself would have made tracking difficult. Here we show that it remains difficult to track the targets even when the target-distractor pairs do not change length and even when the targets can be differentiated from the connectors that join them to the distractors. Our experiments suggest that it is hard to confine attention to just parts of objects, at least in the case of moving objects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the concept of engagement for students to leverage motivation in mathematics. It notes the concern of mathematics educators in Australia due to the deteriorating levels of engagement of students in the subject, which could affect communities that need to fill occupations that require the use of high level mathematics. It also explains the concept and applications of engagement framework that teachers can effectively use to improve student's interest in mathematics.

The goal of science education interventions is to nurture, enrich, and sustain children's natural and spontaneous interest in scientific knowledge and procedures. We present taxonomy for classifying different types of research on scientific thinking from the perspective of cognitive development and associated attempts to teach science. We summarize the literature on the early--unschooled--development of scientific thinking, and then focus on recent research on how best to teach science to children from preschool to middle school. We summarize some of the current disagreements in the field of science education and offer some suggestions on way to continue to advance the science of science instruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of interest is analyzed from the aspect of its change potential and development potential. The paper consists of three parts, which sum up the previous research and theoretical studies concerning stability of interests (in the first part) and the change of interests (in the second part). In the third part, the author presents the most known developmental models of interests, which try to organize the changes of interests into particular developmental phases or interests levels and provide the suggestions how to facilitate these changes. In the conclusion, the author tries to answer the question if the interests are the stable characteristics of a person or the change and development of interests are rather typical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to investigate how situational interest of high school students was triggered during a field trip to an aquarium. Although the role of museums in stimulating interest among students has been acknowledged for some time, empirical evidence about how the specific variable of a museum setting might trigger situational interest is almost nonexistent. The present study was conducted as a case study to provide an inductive, explorative investigation of how situational interest emerged during the field trip. A situative approach to the study of interest was applied in the form of a combined analytical tool that captures both social and psychological aspects. Qualitative methods were used to generate data: observation, video recording, and interviews. The findings showed that the aquarium visit triggered a lot of situational interest among the students and led to positive emotions toward the topic. Five situational variables were found to trigger the students' interest: social involvement, hands-on, surprise, novelty, and knowledge acquisition. The situational variables are largely under the control of the teacher and/or museum staff and should be considered when planning museum visits. This study suggests that teachers can find ways to foster students' involvement in specific content areas and increase levels of academic motivation regardless of prior interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the contingent capture account, top-down attentional control settings restrict involuntary attentional capture to items that match the features of the search target. Attention capture is involuntary, but contingent on goals and intentions. The observation that only target-similar items can capture attention has usually been taken to show that the content of the attentional control settings consists of specific feature values. In contrast, the present study demonstrates that the top-down target template can include information about the relationship between the target and nontarget features (e.g., redder, darker, larger). Several spatial cuing experiments show that a singleton cue that is less similar to the target but that shares the same relational property that distinguishes targets from nontargets can capture attention to the same extent as cues that are similar to the target. Moreover, less similar cues can even capture attention more than cues that are identical to the target when they are relationally better than identical cues. The implications for current theories of attentional capture and attentional guidance are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We tested whether a utility value intervention (via manipulated relevance) influenced interest and performance on a task and whether this intervention had different effects depending on an individual's performance expectations or prior performance. Interest was defined as triggered situational interest (i.e., affective and emotional task reactions) and maintained situational interest (i.e., inclination to engage in the task in the future). In 2 randomized experiments, 1 conducted in the laboratory and the other in a college classroom, utility value was manipulated through a writing task in which participants were asked to explain how the material they were learning (math or psychology) was relevant to their lives (or not). The intervention increased perceptions of utility value and interest, especially for students who were low in expected (laboratory) or actual (classroom) performance. Mediation analyses revealed that perceptions of utility value explained the effects of the intervention on interest and predicted performance. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to identify factors that statistically explain the variation and the measures on the level of motivation of a sample of mathematics students in a university. Specifically, this analysis will identify groups of similar items and reduce the number of variables used in a study. This article explains the use of exploratory factor analysis in extracting factors of personal belief and motivational factors among students in learning mathematics. The adaptation of these factors can be used for assessing academic performance in relation to motivation level. By identifying these factors, the mathematics educators or researchers will be able to find ways to improve the condition of the factors and also to further investigate the factors based on confirmatory approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The unfolding of individual interests is reconstructed as part of a person's everyday experience in dealing with multiple goals. This is exemplified by referring to how adolescents cope with developmental tasks while striving for their ideal selves. Exploratory interaction with objects of potential interest is regarded as a central element that provides information on the criteria for interestingness and enables selective choices. When exploring an object of potential interest, persons have to take into account other goals that may or may not be conflicting. The basic idea is to foster interest development while minimizing goal conflicts and the resulting problems of diminished experience in the interesting activity or diminished performance in noninteresting but important activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study validates a pedagogical framework, which integrates a mainstream game to teach the technology supporting that game. Technologies in learning games can engage students and make the learning contents interesting to them. However, technologies themselves are seldom the subject of learning in the game they support. In addition, learning activities in a gaming context usually engage students temporarily in the subject. As soon as the game is over, students' desire for learning may cease. The framework tries to achieve the transition of students' interests from the initial interest motivated by the game to the later-developed cognitive and personal interests in the subject. Based on the framework, this study designs and experiments a practice to evaluate the proposed framework. Participants' subjective responses show their satisfaction about the practice of learning and developing interest of the subject matter. This study not only provides a dual aspect of game technology adoption for motivating students, but also proposes a pedagogical framework for students' lasting learning. It is expected to provide a new and valuable idea about the use of technologies and games in education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High-stakes testing has driven the way that educators deliver instruction. Historically, standardized testing has been in existence since the 1800s, but the impact of accountability was not recognized until the late 1970s. Science educators are trying to balance the requirements of state assessments with creative and meaningful curricula. Inquiry-based science instruction has led the way in assisting students in the process of discovering knowledge for themselves instead of simply being asked to recall information. Inquiry learning promotes creativity by increasing motivation, wonderment, and curiosity. The author proposes that inquiry is the key to enhancing creativity, while still meeting the demands of standardized testing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper asks why information should ever be expressed vaguely, re-assessing some previously proposed answers to this question and suggesting some new ones. Particular attention is paid to the benefits that vague expressions can have in situations where agreement over the meaning of an expression cannot be taken for granted. A distinction between two different versions of the above-mentioned question is advocated. The first asks why human languages contain vague expressions, the second question asks when and why a speaker should choose a vague expression when communicating with a hearer. While the former question is purely theoretical, the latter has practical implications for the computational generation of utterances in Natural Language Generation (NLG). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of the present study was to determine if older adults benefited from attention to a specific sensory modality in a voluntary attention task and evidenced changes in voluntary or involuntary attention when compared to younger adults. Suppressing and enhancing effects of voluntary attention were assessed using two cued forced-choice tasks, one that asked participants to localize and one that asked them to categorize visual and auditory targets. Involuntary attention was assessed using the same tasks, but with no attentional cues. The effects of attention were evaluated using traditional comparisons of means and Cox proportional hazards models. All analyses showed that older adults benefited behaviorally from selective attention in both visual and auditory conditions, including robust suppressive effects of attention. Of note, the performance of the older adults was commensurate with that of younger adults in almost all analyses, suggesting that older adults can successfully engage crossmodal attention processes. Thus, age-related increases in distractibility across sensory modalities are likely due to mechanisms other than deficits in attentional processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Curiosity has been described as a desire for learning and knowledge, but its underlying mechanisms are not well understood. We scanned subjects with functional magnetic resonance imaging while they read trivia questions. The level of curiosity when reading questions was correlated with activity in caudate regions previously suggested to be involved in anticipated reward. This finding led to a behavioral study, which showed that subjects spent more scarce resources (either limited tokens or waiting time) to find out answers when they were more curious. The functional imaging also showed that curiosity increased activity in memory areas when subjects guessed incorrectly, which suggests that curiosity may enhance memory for surprising new information. This prediction about memory enhancement was confirmed in a behavioral study: Higher curiosity in an initial session was correlated with better recall of surprising answers 1 to 2 weeks later. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated the cognitive effort of 5th and 9th graders while writing a text. We manipulated genre (narrative text vs. argumentative text) and tested how level of handwriting automatisation contributes to cognitive effort and fluency in writing. The participants were 23 students from Grade 5 and 21 from Grade 9, who wrote two texts differing in genre while performing a secondary reaction time task. The results showed that cognitive effort interacted with genre. Cognitive effort decreased between Grades 5 and 9 only for writing argumentative text. Handwriting did not contribute to fluency in writing, but contributed to cognitive effort only in 5th-graders'' writing of narrative text. The findings are discussed in light of the factors contributing to cognitive effort and fluency in writing. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Students’ learning has been the center of schooling. This study examined the contribution of situational interest motivation and cognitive engagement in workbooks to student achievement in learning health-related fitness knowledge. Situational interest, performance on solving workbook problems, and knowledge gain in cardio-respiratory fitness and benefits were measured in 670 third-grade students from 13 randomly selected urban elementary schools. Structural equation modeling and regression curve estimation analyses revealed that situational interest contributed little to workbook performance and knowledge gain. Performance on solving workbook problems contributed significantly to knowledge gain. The results also show that skipping workbook tasks had stronger negative impact on knowledge gain than performing the tasks incorrectly, suggesting the importance of engaging students in the learning process by attempting the workbook tasks. The findings reinforced the value of using workbooks to facilitate cognitive knowledge learning in physical education, but raised questions about the direct function of situational interest on engaging students in cognitive learning. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This article explores how new university students in three different fields of study—arts, law and veterinary medicine—explain their own disciplinary choices (n = 536). Despite the differences between the study fields, the new students' answers often included the word “interest”. Because interest is linked to high-quality learning, the students seem to have a good starting point for their studies. On the other hand, the students use the concept of interest in several contexts, which may reflect diverse usage of the construct as well as different levels of interest development. On the basis of student expressions, five subcategories specifying the level of interest were identified. The study shows that it is possible to identify aspects of individual interest from the rather short written explanations of disciplinary choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article points to an imbalance in studies of Jewish, and particularly German-Jewish, self-hatred, namely, they have focused on answering the question of what Jewish self-hatred is, while devoting relatively little attention to the question of how to identify instances of it. After offering some suggestions as to why that has been so, the article examines the effects of the imbalance; more precisely, it seeks to show how those effects amount to a serious problem in the study of Jewish self-hatred. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Mental processes related to visceral activity have gained growing interest during the last few years. The following study is the first to investigate possible interactions between interoceptive awareness and measures of attentional performance. We tested the hypothesis whether interoceptive awareness is positively related to indices of selective and divided attentional performances. Using a heartbeat perception task, 29 healthy female participants were separated into two groups scoring either high or low in an interoceptive awareness task. Attentional performance was assessed by several tests including the ‘d2 test of attention’ and subtests from the ‘TAP: Test Battery for Attentional Performance’. We observed a significantly better performance in selective and divided attention for participants with high interoceptive awareness. Our data suggests that interoceptive awareness is related to a better performance especially in tasks assessing selective and divided attention. We conclude 1) that perception of bodily states might be a crucial determinant for the processing of external, visual stimuli, 2) that the ability to perceive internal signals might be an indicator of self-focused attention, and 3) that bodily signals may use, at least in part, similar processing resources as signals from the attention system. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

According to traditional theories of identity development, exploration of one's potentials and commitment to a coherent set of values, goals, and behaviors are important to healthy identity development. In this article, I examine how the Self-determination Theory framework provides an understanding of motivational processes that influence these identity concepts of exploration and commitment. Specifically, I review evidence that suggests that the concept of basic psychological needs frames the development of identity through processes of intrinsic motivation and internalization and that need support for these processes by important relationship partners may facilitate outcomes, including academic interest, engagement, and achievement, as well as overall well-being. Finally, I provide a glimpse of potential future directions of research, particularly emphasizing the role of need support when identity is in flux (e.g., reactivated exploration either by self-directed or environmentally prompted events) or when challenged by macrolevel social pressures, such as high-stakes testing in education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An inductive model is proposed that suggests that support for the development and deepening of interest can be aided by knowledge of identity development. The model suggests that instructional practice would be usefully informed were educators (e.g., teachers, parents, museum curators, counselors) to have information about both the phase of a learner's interest and age-related expectations about their identity development, when working to promote learning of particular disciplinary content. Research describing phases in the development of interest and the age-related challenges and expectations specific to self-representation is reviewed, followed by evidence from the literature that provides preliminary support for the model. Research directions needed to challenge and refine the model follow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Melioration is borrowing and using an idea from another field not closely associated with your field of expertise. Using the borrowed concept to address a challenge in your field potentially provides new avenues of action and insight. I borrow the concept of boundary objects from science fields and use it to examine assignments in the college classroom. Through analysis of student-teacher discussion, I become aware that content, not assignment, is the boundary object of interest. Avenues of action and insight opened through that analysis are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explored the relationship between handedness and interest in night-sky watching. University students (N = 128) completed the Edinburgh Handedness Inventory (Oldfield, 1971) and the Noctcaelador Inventory (Kelly, 2004). The findings indicated that mixed-handed participants scored highest on noctcaelador relative to those classified as either left or right-handed. The results and suggestions for future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The primary purpose of the present study is to evaluate the emotional experience of students with (n = 52) and without attention problems (n = 272) during an achievement task. A secondary purpose of the present study is to compare students' emotional response to various stimuli, when motivated by various achievement goals. Participants were randomly assigned into a mastery goal condition, a normative performance goal condition, and a non-normative performance goal condition. Results, using a latent means analysis, indicate that students with attention problems needed additional time to process emotion-loaded but not neutral words, providing evidence for an interference effect. Furthermore, students in the performance-normative, relative to the performance non-normative, condition showed a salient interference effect with respect to various emotion-loaded and neutral words. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author studied the pedagogy of Socrates looking for teaching techniques that help maintain students' interest in an ongoing discussion. Socrates' use of such strategies as asking probing questions, expanding the discussion into its relationship to other ideas, assuming the role of the devil's advocate, and spending time on group maintenance can be extremely helpful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ADHD (Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder) continues to be a controversial issue among some educationalists. This paper argues that negativity towards the ADHD concept shown by some antagonists is based on outdated thinking and a lack of understanding of the diagnosis and the biopsychosocial paradigm through which it can be usefully understood. The author delineates a biopsychosocial account of ADHD and gives particular attention to the educational implications of this view, exploring empirical evidence on effective educational interventions for ADHD. A major conclusion that is drawn from the discussion is that educationalists who deride the ADHD concept from an uninformed position are not only hindering the development of effective interventions for ADHD, they are failing to exploit the educational potential of a biopsychosocial perspective that is likely to go well beyond the issue of ADHD in schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children may recruit their teachers' attention at undesirably high rates or at inconvenient times. Tiger and Hanley (2004) described a multiple-schedule procedure to reduce ill-timed requests, which involved providing children with two distinct continuous signals that were correlated with periods in which teacher attention was either available or unavailable. The current study extended the application of multiple schedules by evaluating the effectiveness of the procedure when implemented by private-school teachers in 3 elementary classrooms. Following the introduction of the multiple schedules, student approaches toward their teacher were maintained during desirable periods but were minimized during undesirable periods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study investigated intraindividual variation in students' interest experience in 3 school subjects and the predictive power of perceived autonomy support and control. Participants were 261 students in 7th grade. After a survey of students' individual interests and other individual characteristics, repeated lesson-specific measures of students' interest experience and perceived autonomy support and control during instruction were obtained over a 3-week period. Hierarchical linear modeling showed 36%-45% of the variance to be located at the within-student level. Moreover, perceived autonomy support and control during lessons, as well as individual interest, predicted students' interest experience in the classroom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research presented in this article integrates 3 theoretical perspectives in the field of motivation: expectancy-value, achievement goals, and interest. The authors examined the antecedents (initial interest, achievement goals) and consequences (interest, performance) of task value judgments in 2 learning contexts: a college classroom and a high school sports camp. The pattern of findings was consistent across both learning contexts. Initial interest and mastery goals predicted subsequent interest, and task values mediated these relationships. Performance-approach goals and utility value predicted actual performance as indexed by final course grade (classroom) and coach ratings of performance (sports camp). Implications for theories of motivation are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Growth modeling is a useful tool for studying change over time, and it is becoming increasingly popular with developmental researchers. There is a considerable methodological literature surrounding growth modeling for individuals; however, far less attention has been focused on growth models for pairs of related individuals (i.e., dyads). In this article, the authors consider dyadic growth models for those cases where there are no relevant variables that can empirically distinguish between dyad members (e.g., same-sex twins or best friends). The authors describe how researchers can estimate growth models for indistinguishable dyads using both multilevel modeling and structural equation modeling. Although both approaches can be used to estimate the same underlying models, the authors focus on practical similarities and differences between the two approaches. They illustrate modeling issues using an overtime study of adolescent twins' conflict with their mothers, a substantively important topic given the enduring interest in parent-child relationships during adolescence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study examines the interests and attitudes of school students toward biology: through their interest in out-of-school activities and their attitude towards lessons as measured by interest, importance and difficulty. Biology lessons were relatively popular with the greatest preference found among students learning zoology. Girls showed significantly greater interest in biology than boys. This difference was highest among grade five (age 10-11) students when learning botany. Girls assessed biology as more important and less difficult than boys. Biology-related hobbies, films and books received greater attention (10-21%) than other activities and were significantly related. However, fifth grade students (both boys and girls) exhibited difficulties in learning botany and interest in biology decreased with age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This experiment investigated the relationships between the characteristics of prospective-users of traffic signs (people who will use the signs in the future) and the guessability of traffic signs, and also examined the effects of sign design features on the guessability of traffic signs. Forty-one Hong Kong Chinese subjects guessed the meanings and rated the sign features of 120 Mainland Chinese signs. Contrary to expectation, cycling experience and previous experience with sign information had no effect on sign guessing. Males and females with similar education level had similar guessing performance. Previous experience of visiting Mainland China was a significant predictor of guessing performance. Family ownership of a vehicle was associated with guessing performance for subjects who intended to become a driver and for those with car game experience. Subjects who claimed to pay attention to traffic signs in daily life performed better at sign guessing than those who did not. Traffic incident experience did not seem to enhance awareness of, or knowledge about, traffic signs. Guessability of a sign varied with the five design features of; familiarity, concreteness, simplicity, meaningfulness, and semantic closeness of the sign. Semantic closeness was the best predictor of guessability score, followed by familiarity, meaningfulness, concreteness, and simplicity. In order to design more user-friendly traffic signs and effective ways of using them, it is suggested that designers develop and evaluate signs according to the relative importance of the five sign features. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This study examined three assumptions of the theory of deliberate practice: that deliberate practice is perceived as relevant for improving performance and that it requires effort, but that it is not perceived as being inherently enjoyable. Of particular interest was how these perceptions change as practice difficulty changes. 30 college undergraduates practiced two different maze memorization and replication tasks and rated the practice relevance for improving performance on the task, the practice effort, and the inherent enjoyment of practice. The findings for each of the assumptions were consistent with those suggested by the theory and also showed that these perceptions are subject to the current performance on an activity and the difficulty of the practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Setting events are typically seen as antecedent contextual variables that influence behaviour. They are thought to act independently of Skinner's three-term contingency, which consists of a discriminative stimulus, response, and reinforcing consequence. There has been increasing interest in setting events in education from both a theoretical and applied perspective. This paper examines a range of conceptualisations of setting events and appraises the extent to which they can be viewed as a discrete class of phenomena. Variation in the terminology used to describe setting events and lack of clarity in consideration of explanatory mechanisms tends to hinder analysis. Nevertheless, a number of plausible explanations exist to account for setting events associated with both conditioned and unconditioned reinforcers. While the conceptual underpinnings of setting events remain unclear in part, they do serve the function of drawing our attention to a wide range of antecedent variables that may influence behaviour. Resolution of issues related to consistency of terminology and clarification of our conceptual understanding of setting events may provide further guidance in their practical application to behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two studies tested whether the possession of a mental story-bank (a set of thematically related narratives) affected the processing of a related narrative. Three competing predictions were proposed: a story-bank may lead to reduced attention, increased attention, or selective attention to a new, related story. The results of Study 1 (N = 125 undergraduates) suggested that a prior story-bank led to more efficient processing of a target narrative (as indicated by recall data), favoring a selective attention interpretation. Study 2 (N = 114 undergraduates) showed that individuals who possessed a relevant story-bank were more persuaded by a related target narrative, also consistent with the selective attention interpretation. Story-banks thus appeared to facilitate, rather than hinder, processing of new narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Individual interest was examined as a moderator of effects of situational factors designed to catch and hold task interest. In Study 1, 96 college students learned a math technique with materials enhanced with collative features (catch) versus not. Catch promoted motivation among participants with low individual interest in math (IIM) but hampered motivation among those with high IIM. In Study 2 (n = 145), catch was crossed with a hold manipulation, emphasizing utility. Effects of each manipulation depended on IIM. The catch results were similar to those in Study 1. Hold promoted motivation among participants with high IIM and undermined it among participants with low IIM. Discussion centers on the intersection of individual and situational interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the case of the Flemish policy on educational quality and based on a series of case studies, the author argues that the impact of central policy measures on educational practices in schools is never simply straightforward. Policy measures are always interpreted by and translated to the particular context of a school. In these processes of interpretation the teachers' and principal's agenda of professional interests plays a crucial role. Taking up the micropolitical perspective on schools as a descriptive and analytical theoretical lens, the author argues that these interests reflect different types of working conditions that are considered valuable or necessary by the teachers and principal to do a good job. If these conditions are absent, threatened or lost, people will engage in micropolitical actions in order to establish, safeguard or restore the desirable working conditions. Five different categories of professional interests were identified in the analysis of the case study data. Describing these categories, the author shows how the macropolitical agenda gets caught up in the micropolitics of the local schools during the policy implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Of interest was whether prior testing of related words primes false memories in the Deese/Roediger–McDermott (DRM) paradigm. After studying lists of related words, subjects made old–new judgments about zero, three, or six related items before being tested on critical nonpresented lures. When the recognition test was self-paced, prior testing of list items led to faster false recognition judgments, but did not increase the rate of false alarms to lures from studied lists. Critically, this pattern changed when decision making at test was speeded. When forced to respond quickly—presumably precluding the use of monitoring processes—clear test-induced priming effects were observed in the rate of false memories. The results are consistent with an activation-monitoring explanation of false memories and support that retrieving veridical memories can be a source of memory error. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background. Research has suggested that students can approach their studies with different goals, one goal being to understand material (mastery) and another to obtain better grades than others (performance). Aim. The main aim of this study was to assess whether these goals change as students progress through their degrees. Sample. 1857 students at a Scottish university. Methods. Students were asked to complete a questionnaire as they waited to register for their courses. The questionnaire was based on an achievement motivation questionnaire developed by Elliot and McGregor (2001) to assess students' mastery and performance goals; there were also questions on students' expectations about their courses. Results. Students in years 2, 3 and 4 were substantially less likely to want to master their subjects than students in year 1. They were also more concerned with grades and less likely to expect to enjoy their courses. Conclusion. The decline in students' motivation to master their subjects raises potentially important questions about whether pressures for grades undermine students' interest in their studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]