Multilingualism is often associated with advantages for acquiring additional languages. Theoretical approaches explain these advantages by assuming a Common Underlying Proficiency or a Metalinguistic Awareness. At the State Europe School in Berlin, students from different language backgrounds receive instruction in German and a partner language…

Using German data, we examined the effects of one specific type of acceleration--grade skipping--on academic performance. Prior research on the effects of acceleration has suffered from methodological restrictions, especially due to a lack of appropriate comparison groups and a priori measurements. For this reason, propensity score matching was…

This study examines the relationships between school poverty status, family income status, and reasoning ability for the purpose of understanding the role of school poverty on reasoning skills. Cognitive ability scores of students attending mixed-poverty schools were compared to their counterparts attending institutions with low, high, and extreme…

This study explored the Junior Brixton Test (JBT), an executive function (EF) measure for children, in comparison to the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) in a sample of 6- to 8-year-olds, all attending the first 2 years of elementary school. Factor analyses indicated two main domains in both measures, namely concept formation and cognitive…

CognitiveGenesis collected achievement and ability test data from 2006-2009 for all students in Seventh-day Adventist schools in North America. Students were above average in achievement compared to national norms and achieved above that predicted by their ability scores. The more years students attended Adventist schools, the higher they…

Education reform efforts, including the current adoption of Common Core State Standards, have increased attention to teaching critical thinking skills to all students. This study investigated the critical thinking skills of fourth-grade students from a school district in Texas, including 45 identified gifted students and 163 general education…

This longitudinal study investigated the contribution of achievement goals and academic self-concept for the prediction of unexpected academic achievement (i.e., achievement that is higher or lower than expected with respect to students' cognitive ability) in general and when comparing groups of extreme over- and underachievers. Our sample…

Background: Vocational interests play a central role in the vocational decision-making process and are decisive for the later job satisfaction and vocational success. Based on Ackerman's (1996) notion of "trait complexes," specific interest profiles of gifted high-school graduates can be expected. Aims: Vocational interests of gifted and…

The Naglieri Nonverbal Ability Test, Second Edition (NNAT2), is used widely to screen students for possible inclusion in talent development programs. The NNAT2 claims to provide a more culturally neutral evaluation of general ability than tests such as Form 6 of the Cognitive Abilities Test (CogAT6), which has Verbal and Quantitative batteries in…

Background: Strand, Deary, and Smith (2006) reported an analysis of sex differences on the Cognitive Abilities Test (CAT) for over 320,000 UK students 11-12 years old. Although mean differences were small, males were overrepresented at the upper and lower extremes of the score distributions on the quantitative and non-verbal batteries and at the…

In a three-part study we explored implications for enhancing the role of "Corrective Reading" ("CR") in systemic school reform relating to teacher judgments of the high levels of student academic performance required by "CR" tasks in contrast to inappropriate instructional perspectives applied by teachers regarding…

Describes a study conducted at Iowa State University that investigated the effects of using guided programing instruction to train analogical reasoning. Two groups of students are compared who received different types of programing instruction, and the far transfer and the near transfer of instruction are explored. (35 references) (LRW)

Whether boys and girls perform differently on mathematics estimation items with a picture format (applied context [AC] items) compared with items with a numbers-only (NC) format was studied when effects of computational skill, conceptual knowledge, and quantitative ability were controlled. Subjects were approximately 80,000 students from grades 4…

Investigates performance differences on receptive vocabulary and general verbal reasoning ability of 206 Hualapai Indian children. Results indicate Hualapai children score significantly lower on both measures of verbal ability when compared to national norms. Findings provide a long-needed archival record of the Hualapai's English language…

To investigate the impact which continuity in children's programs might have for children's longterm cognitive and noncognitive development, effects of a prekindergarten (PreK) program on children's performance was measured using two cognitive measures at the end of the subjects' first grade year. Staff development activities in selected districts…