This study investigates the direct and/or indirect effects of some cognitive (working memory capacity) and affective (writing anxiety and writing self-efficacy) variables on the complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF) of second language (L2) learners' writings. To achieve this goal, 232 upper-intermediate English learners performed an automated…

Most of the individual difference variance in the population is found "within" families, yet studying the processes causing this variation is difficult due to confounds between genetic and nongenetic influences. Quasi-experiments can be used to test hypotheses regarding environment exposure (e.g., timing, duration) while controlling for…

Mind wandering--mentation unrelated to one's current activity and surroundings--is a ubiquitous phenomenon, but seemingly competing ideas have been proposed regarding its relation to executive cognitive processes. The control-failure hypothesis postulates that executive processes prevent mind wandering, whereas the global availability hypothesis…

Executive functions are crucial for efficient daily functioning. However, the contribution of executive functions to the participation in daily life activities of children, have been inadequately studied. The study aimed to examine the unique contribution of executive functions, beyond motor ability, to the diversity and independence of children's…

The home numeracy environment (i.e., parents' numeracy expectations and activities), is related to early numeracy in young children. As recent studies have shown that both cognitive and linguistic factors play an important role in predicting numeracy development, it may be assumed that rather than the home "numeracy" environment, the…

There is a plethora of research suggesting that daily stressors and fatigue can have a significant effect on learning and various cognitive functions in young adults. Little is known, however, about how these effects impact learning and other neurocognitive functions in students with learning challenges when compared to their counterparts without…

Changes in the demands posed by increasingly complex workplaces in the 21st century have raised the importance of nonroutine skills such as complex problem solving (CPS). However, little is known about the antecedents and outcomes of CPS, especially with regard to malleable external factors such as classroom climate. To investigate the relations…

Anxiety and depression are linked to lower academic performance. It is proposed that academic performance is reduced in young people with high levels of anxiety or depression as a function of increased test-specific worry that impinges on working memory central executive processes. Participants were typically developing children (12 to…

Worked examples, commonly used in technical domains, are rarely used in language areas such as English literature. In 3 experiments, Korean university students for whom English was a foreign language received worked examples intended to facilitate problem solving in the ill-structured domain of English literature. During the learning phase, half…

Several judgment and decision-making tasks are assumed to involve memory functions, but significant knowledge gaps on the memory processes underlying these tasks remain. In a study on 568 adults between 25 and 80 years of age, hypotheses were tested on the specific relationships between individual differences in working memory, episodic memory,…

Learning-related behaviors are important for school success. Socioeconomic disadvantage confers risk for less adaptive learning-related behaviors at school entry, yet substantial variability in school readiness exists within socioeconomically disadvantaged populations. Investigation of neurophysiological systems associated with learning-related…