Search Results (574)

Local structural equation models (LSEM) are structural equation models that study model parameters as a function of a moderator. This article reviews and extends LSEM estimation methods and discusses the implementation in the R package sirt. In previous studies, LSEM was fitted as a sequence of models separately evaluated as each value of the moderator variables. In this article, a joint estimation approach is proposed that is a simultaneous estimation method across all moderator values and also allows some model parameters to be invariant with respect to the moderator. Moreover, sufficient details on the main estimation functions in the R package sirt are provided. The practical implementation of LSEM is demonstrated using illustrative datasets and an empirical example. Moreover, two simulation studies investigate the statistical properties of parameter estimation and significance testing in LSEM. Full article

This article examines the concept of intelligence and giftedness of the German psychologist and philosopher William Stern, the leading intelligence and giftedness researcher in Germany from the early 20th century to 1933. Stern developed a multifactorial giftedness model that integrated empirical and philosophical perspectives and was thus far ahead of his time. This concept was not taken up for a long time—not least because of the break that the research on giftedness suffered in Germany in 1933—and has not yet been presented with the required complexity and interdisciplinarity. In the USA, Stern’s research has so far been reduced to the IQ formula he created. The author presents Stern’s concept of giftedness in the context of the particular scientific–historical and educational–political situation in Germany in the first third of the 20th century. The pedagogical conclusions that Stern associated with the research on giftedness, and which essentially referred to the requirement to support all gifted children, regardless of social class, are also illuminated. Full article

Social mentalizing plays a crucial role in two-person interactions. Depending on the target of inference and the content being inferred, social mentalizing primarily exists in two forms: first-order mentalizing and second-order mentalizing. Our research aims to investigate the cue sources and cue utilization patterns of social mentalizing during two-person interactions. Our study created an experimental situation of a two-person interaction and used the “Spot the difference” game to reveal our research question with multi-stage tasks. Our study was divided into two experiments, Experiment 1 and Experiment 2, which examined the cue sources and cue utilization patterns of first- and second-order mentalizing, respectively. The results of the experiments showed that (1) self-performance and other performance are significant cues utilized by individuals during social mentalizing. (2) Individuals employ discrepancies to modulate the relationship between self-performance and first-order mentalizing as well as to adjust the relationship between otherperformance and second-order mentalizing. The results of this study further complement the dual-processing model of mindreading and the anchoring and adjustment hypothesis during social inference. Full article

After considering the pervasiveness of same/different relationships in Psychology and the experimental evidence of their perceptual foundation in Psychophysics and Infant and Comparative Psychology, this paper develops its main argument. Similarity and diversity do not complete the panorama since opposition constitutes a third relationship which is distinct from the other two. There is evidence of this in the previous literature investigating the perceptual basis of opposition and in the results of the two new studies presented in this paper. In these studies, the participants were asked to indicate to what extent pairs of simple bi-dimensional figures appeared to be similar, different or opposite to each other. A rating task was used in Study 1 and a pair comparison task was used in Study 2. Three main results consistently emerged: Firstly, opposition is distinct from similarity and difference which, conversely, are in a strictly inverse relationship. Secondly, opposition is specifically linked to something which points in an allocentrically opposite direction. Thirdly, alterations to the shape of an object are usually associated with the perception of diversity rather than opposition. The implications of a shift from a dyadic (same/different) to a triadic (similar/different/opposite) paradigm are discussed in the final section. Full article

Success in cognitive tasks is associated with effort regulation and motivation. We employed the meta-reasoning approach to investigate metacognitive monitoring accuracy and effort regulation in problem solving across cultures. Adults from China, from Israel, and from Europe and North America (for simplicity: “Western countries”) solved nonverbal problems and rated their confidence in their answers. The task involved identifying geometric shapes within silhouettes and, thus, required overcoming interference from holistic processing. The Western group displayed the worst monitoring accuracy, with both the highest overconfidence and poorest resolution (discrimination in confidence between the correct and wrong solutions). The Israeli group resembled the Western group in many respects but exhibited better monitoring accuracy. The Chinese group invested the most time and achieved the best success rates, demonstrating exceptional motivation and determination to succeed. However, their efficiency suffered as they correctly solved the fewest problems per minute of work. Effort regulation analysis based on the Diminishing Criterion Model revealed distinct patterns: the Western participants invested the least amount of time regardless of item difficulty and the Israelis invested more time only when addressing the hardest items. The Chinese group allocated more time throughout but particularly in moderate to difficult items, hinting at their strategic determination to overcome the challenge. Understanding cultural differences in metacognitive processes carries implications for theory (e.g., motivational factors) and practice (e.g., international teams, education). The present findings can serve as a foundation for future research in these and other domains. Full article

AI, or artificial intelligence, is a technology of creating algorithms and computer systems that mimic human cognitive abilities to perform tasks. Many industries are undergoing revolutions due to the advances and applications of AI technology. The current study explored a burgeoning field—Psychometric AI, which integrates AI methodologies and psychological measurement to not only improve measurement accuracy, efficiency, and effectiveness but also help reduce human bias and increase objectivity in measurement. Specifically, by leveraging unobtrusive eye-tracking sensing techniques and performing 1470 runs with seven different machine-learning classifiers, the current study systematically examined the efficacy of various (ML) models in measuring different facets and measures of the emotional intelligence (EI) construct. Our results revealed an average accuracy ranging from 50–90%, largely depending on the percentile to dichotomize the EI scores. More importantly, our study found that AI algorithms were powerful enough to achieve high accuracy with as little as 5 or 2 s of eye-tracking data. The research also explored the effects of EI facets/measures on ML measurement accuracy and identified many eye-tracking features most predictive of EI scores. Both theoretical and practical implications are discussed. Full article

Modernization and meritocratic theories contend that with modernization, socioeconomic background (SES) becomes less important for educational and socioeconomic attainments, while cognitive ability becomes more important. However, the evidence is mixed. This study investigates if the effects of SES and cognitive ability on educational and labor market outcomes have changed in the US by comparing two longitudinal cohort studies: the 1960 Project Talent and the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. For all outcomes—grades-at-school, educational and occupational attainment, and income—cognitive ability clearly has stronger effects than a composite and broad measure of SES. The effects of cognitive ability for grades-at-school and income are notably stronger in the more recent cohort, whereas its effects on educational and occupational attainment are similar. SES effects, net of ability, for educational and occupational attainment are only moderate and for school grades and income are very small (β < 0.10). However, for each outcome SES effects are stronger in the more recent NLSY79 cohort. This is attributed to ability being a stronger influence on the educational and socioeconomic attainments of NLSY79 parents compared to Project Talent parents. These analyses suggest that in the US, cognitive ability has long been an important, and SES a much weaker, influence on educational and subsequent socioeconomic outcomes. Full article

Mental rotation is a critically important, early developing spatial skill that is related to other spatial cognitive abilities. Understanding the early development of this skill, however, requires a developmentally appropriate assessment that can be used with infants, toddlers, and young children. We present here a new eye-tracking task that uses a staircase procedure to assess mental rotation in 12-, 24-, and 36-month-old children (N = 41). To ensure that all children understood the task, the session began with training and practice, in which the children learned to fixate which of two houses a giraffe, facing either left or right, would approach. The adaptive two-up, one-down staircase procedure assessed the children’s ability to fixate the correct house when the giraffe was rotated in 30° (up) or 15° (down) increments. The procedure was successful, with most children showing evidence of mental rotation. In addition, the children were less likely to succeed as the angle of rotation increased, and the older children succeeded at higher angles of rotation than the younger children, replicating previous findings with other procedures. The present study contributes a new paradigm that can assess the development of mental rotation in young children and holds promise for yielding insights into individual differences in mental rotation. Full article

There is a host of research on the structure of working memory (WM) and its relationship with intelligence in adults, but only a few studies have involved children. In this paper, several different WM models were tested on 170 Japanese school children (from 7 years and 5 months to 11 years and 6 months). Results showed that a model distinguishing between modalities (i.e., verbal and spatial WM) fitted the data well and was therefore selected. Notably, a bi-factor model distinguishing between modalities, but also including a common WM factor, presented with a very good fit, but was less parsimonious. Subsequently, we tested the predictive power of the verbal and spatial WM factors on fluid and crystallized intelligence. Results indicated that the shared contribution of WM explained the largest portion of variance of fluid intelligence, with verbal and spatial WM independently explaining a residual portion of the variance. Concerning crystallized intelligence, however, verbal WM explained the largest portion of the variance, with the joint contribution of verbal and spatial WM explaining the residual part. The distinction between verbal and spatial WM could be important in clinical settings (e.g., children with atypical development might struggle selectively on some WM components) and in school settings (e.g., verbal and spatial WM might be differently implicated in mathematical achievement). Full article

Adolescence is an increasingly vulnerable period for the onset of affective disorders and other mental health issues that can significantly impact an individual’s subjective well-being. This study aims to examine the relationship between emotional intelligence (ability EI), measured with a performance-based instrument, and Subjective Happiness in adolescents. It also explores the mediating role of positive (PA) and negative affect (NA) in this association and the moderating role of gender. The sample consisted of 333 first-year secondary school students from five centers in Spain, with an average age of 12.11 years (SD = 0.64), ranging from 11–14 years. Path analysis revealed an indirect effect (through NA and PA jointly) of Total Ability EI on Subjective Happiness and a positive direct effect that was observed only in females. Furthermore, this association was explored through various branches of ability EI. The results of this study suggest that interventions aimed at improving emotional abilities in adolescents while modulating the intensity of their emotions could significantly impact their overall well-being. Full article

Mental rotation (MR) and perspective taking (PT) are important spatial abilities and predictive of performance in other cognitive domains. Yet, age-appropriate measures to assess these spatial abilities in children are still rare. This study examined psychometric properties of four MR tasks in 6- to 9-year-olds (N = 96). Two were developed specifically for children and two were based on established assessments for adults; one of each was a computerized and one was a paper–pencil task. Furthermore, spatial perspective taking (PT)—a different but closely related ability—was assessed to determine discriminant validity. Factor analyses showed that all MR tasks loaded on one single factor, with PT only loading weakly on the same factor, suggesting high construct validity. The computerized task for adults showed moderate factor loadings, constituted its own (but correlated) factor when a two-factor solution was forced, and showed the lowest reliabilities, suggesting that it was very difficult for children. On average, the new MR tasks had good to excellent reliabilities, differentiated well between age groups, and proved to be well-suited to assess MR in this age range. The PT task also showed good reliability and a steep developmental progression. Relations to verbal skills, gaming experience, and TV consumption are discussed. Full article

Making judgments of learning (JOLs) while studying related word pairs can enhance performance on tests that rely on cue-target associations (e.g., cued recall) compared to studying alone. One possible explanation for this positive JOL reactivity effect is that the prompt to make JOLs, which typically occurs halfway through the presentation of each pair, may encourage learners to devote more attention to the pair during the second half of the encoding episode, which may contribute to enhanced recall performance. To investigate this idea, an online sample of participants (Experiment 1) and undergraduate students (Experiment 2) studied a set of moderately related word pairs (e.g., dairy–cow) in preparation for a cued recall test. Some participants made JOLs for each pair halfway through the presentation, whereas other participants did not. Also, some participants were presented with a fixation point halfway through the presentation, whereas other participants were not. The goal of this fixation point was to simulate the possible “reorienting” effect of a JOL prompt halfway through each encoding episode. In both an unsupervised online context and a supervised laboratory context, cued recall performance was higher for participants who made JOLs compared to those who did not make JOLs. However, presenting a fixation point halfway through the presentation of each pair did not lead to reactive effects on memory. Thus, JOLs are more effective than a manipulation that reoriented participants to the word pairs in another way (i.e., via a fixation point), which provides some initial evidence that positive reactivity for related pairs is not solely driven by attentional reorienting during encoding. Full article

Noncognitive constructs are commonly assessed in educational and organizational research. They are often measured by summing scores across items, which implicitly assumes a dominance item response process. However, research has shown that the unfolding response process may better characterize how people respond to noncognitive items. The Generalized Graded Unfolding Model (GGUM) representing the unfolding response process has therefore become increasingly popular. However, the current implementation of the GGUM is limited to unidimensional cases, while most noncognitive constructs are multidimensional. Fitting a unidimensional GGUM separately for each dimension and ignoring the multidimensional nature of noncognitive data may result in suboptimal parameter estimation. Recently, an R package bmggum was developed that enables the estimation of the Multidimensional Generalized Graded Unfolding Model (MGGUM) with covariates using a Bayesian algorithm. However, no simulation evidence is available to support the accuracy of the Bayesian algorithm implemented in bmggum. In this research, two simulation studies were conducted to examine the performance of bmggum. Results showed that bmggum can estimate MGGUM parameters accurately, and that multidimensional estimation and incorporating relevant covariates into the estimation process improved estimation accuracy. The effectiveness of two Bayesian model selection indices, WAIC and LOO, were also investigated and found to be satisfactory for model selection. Empirical data were used to demonstrate the use of bmggum and its performance was compared with three other GGUM software programs: GGUM2004, GGUM, and mirt. Full article

Is metacognitive ability a predictor of creative performance? Previous studies have produced conflicting findings. To clarify whether this relationship exists, the current study used eye tracking techniques and vocal thinking reports to explore creativity differences in individuals with different levels of metacognitive ability. One hundred and twelve participants completed the Metacognitive Ability scale, and were divided into two groups (with thirty participants in each group) based on their metacognition scores (the highest and lowest 27% of metacognitive ability scores). Then, participants in both groups completed two creative thinking tasks (AUT and CCRAT) while their eye behaviors were recorded by eye tracking. The results showed that participants with high metacognitive ability were better at divergent thinking, as evidenced by greater fixation and saccade counts, as well as smaller saccade amplitudes in the AUT task. In addition, Bayesian analyses provide anecdotal evidence that participants with high metacognitive ability tended to be better at convergent thinking. Furthermore, eye tracking results demonstrated that they exhibited longer fixation duration and more fixation count on the materials in the CCRAT task. These findings reflect an important role of metacognition in creative thinking, especially in divergent thinking. Full article

Research shows that children’s block construction skills are positively associated with their concurrent and later mathematics performance. Furthermore, there is evidence that block construction training is particularly beneficial for improving early mathematics skills in children from low-Socio Economic Status (SES) groups who are known to have lower maths performance than their peers. The current study investigates (a) the association between block construction and mathematics in children just before the start of formal schooling (4 years-of-age in the UK) and (b) whether the association between block construction and mathematics differs between children from more compared to less affluent families. Participants in this study included 116 children (M = 3 years 11 months, SD = 3 months) who all completed numeracy, block construction, and receptive vocabulary tasks. Socio-economic status and demographic information (child age, gender, ethnicity) were also obtained from parents. Findings show a strong positive association between block construction and early numeracy skills. Block construction skills explained approximately 5% of the variation in numeracy, even after controlling for age in months, household income, and child receptive vocabulary. When separated by SES group, for children from less affluent families, block construction explained a significant amount of variability (14.5%) in numeracy performance after covariates. For children from more affluent families, block construction did not explain a significant amount of variation in numeracy. These findings suggest that, interventions involving block construction skills may help to reduce SES-based attainment gaps in UK children’s mathematics achievement. Full article