Social scientists have predicted that individuals who occupy socially privileged positions or who have conservative political orientations are most likely to endorse the idea that genes are the root cause of differences among individuals. Drawing on a nationally representative sample of the US population, this study examines belief in the…

Ahmad R. Hariri, recipient of the Award for Distinguished Scientific Early Career Contributions to Psychology, is cited for pioneering contributions to understanding the neurobiological mechanisms driving individual differences in complex behavior traits. Hariri has integrated molecular genetics, neuropharmacology, neuroimaging, and psychology in…

Based on data collected from 211 elementary school children in central Taiwan over four years, the role of temperament in science achievement was examined with multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) with repeated measures design. The results revealed that the students' science achievement is stable over time. The task orientation…

Temperament refers to individual differences in two broad aspects of behavior: (1) emotional, motor, and attentional reactivity and (2) self-regulatory processes that modulate such reactivity. These individual differences are grounded in people's constitution and influence both stress reactions and patterns of coping. In this chapter, we examine…

Background: Individual differences in specific components of attention contribute to behavioral reactivity and regulation. Children with the temperament of behavioral inhibition (BI) provide a good context for considering the manner in which certain components of attention shape behavior. Infants and children characterized as behaviorally…

This single-subject study assessed the effects of in-classroom coaching on early childhood teachers' use of emergent literacy teaching strategies. Teaching strategies were grouped into clusters related to oral language and comprehension of text, phonological awareness and alphabetic principle, and print concepts and written language, with coaching…

Children with unintelligible speech differ in severity, underlying deficit, type of surface error patterns and response to treatment. Detailed treatment case studies, evaluating specific intervention protocols for particular diagnostic groups, can identify best practice for children with speech disorder. Three treatment case studies evaluated the…

This study consists of a comparative analysis of patterns of de-escalation between ages 17-18 and 32, based on data from two well-known prospective longitudinal studies, the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development (a study of 411 working-class males in London) and the Montreal Two Samples Longitudinal Study (a sample of 470 adjudicated…

Background: According to the "Simple View of Reading" (Hoover and Gough 1990), individual differences in reading comprehension are accounted for by decoding skills and listening comprehension, each of which makes a unique and specific contribution. Aims: The current research was aimed at testing the Simple View of Reading in individuals…

Two under-explored areas of developmental dyslexia research, face naming and age of acquisition (AoA), were investigated. Eighteen dyslexic and 18 non-dyslexic university students named the faces of 50 well-known celebrities, matched for facial distinctiveness and familiarity. Twenty-five of the famous people were learned early in life, while the…

Many explanations of the difficulties associated with interpreting object relative clauses appeal to the demands that object relatives make on working memory. MacDonald and Christiansen [MacDonald, M. C., & Christiansen, M. H. (2002). "Reassessing working memory: Comment on Just and Carpenter (1992) and Waters and Caplan (1996)." "Psychological…

This study investigated "individual differences" in different aspects of early number concepts in preschoolers. Eighty 4-year-olds from Oxford nursery classes took part. They were tested on accuracy of counting sets of objects; the cardinal word principle; the order irrelevance principle; and predicting the results of repeated addition…

The purpose of this study was to investigate sources of inter-individual differences in current events knowledge. The study occurred in two sessions. In the initial session, 579 participants completed tests to ability, personality, and interest factors, as well as prior knowledge of current events. Approximately 10 weeks later, participants…

The variability in deep and surface learning has been discussed as part of the trait vs. state debate. However, the question is to what extent students change strategies as a function of course demands. This study focused on discerning subgroups of learners with respect to variability in learning strategies and the role of students' learning…

A study to investigate the relation between psychopathology and predictive validity of emotional reactivity in children over a 1-year follow up period was conducted. The investigation was done using the International Affective Picture System to determine individual differences in the emotional and attention process involved in appetitive and…