Inattentional blindness refers to the finding that people do not always see what appears in their gaze. Though inattentional blindness affects large percentages of people, it is unclear if there are individual differences in susceptibility. The present study addressed whether individual differences in attentional control, as reflected by…

Many social interactions require the synchronization--be it automatically or intentionally--of one's own behavior with that of others. Using a dyadic drumming paradigm, the authors delineate lifespan differences in interpersonal action synchronization (IAS). Younger children, older children, younger adults, and older adults in same- and mixed-age…

This study tested tenets of objectification theory and explored the role of the hijab in body image and eating disorder symptoms with a sample of 118 Muslim women in the United States. Results from a path analysis indicated that individual differences in wearing the hijab were related negatively with reported sexual objectification experiences.…

Purpose: Older school-aged children and adolescents with persistent language and literacy impairments vary in their individual profiles of linguistic strengths and weaknesses. Given the multidimensional nature and complexity of language, designing an assessment protocol capable of uncovering linguistic variation is challenging. A process of…

This study reported the development and validation of the Social Identities and Attitudes Scale (SIAS), a stereotype threat susceptibility measure. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses conducted with college students indicate that the scale possesses strong psychometric properties. The SIAS explained 65% of the variance in the items…

An adult child's provision of care to an unmarried elderly mother varies both within and between families. Within-family differences address the variation in different children's behavior within in a family. Between-family differences refer to the propensities that members of a family--the children of one mother--share and that differentiate them…

Whereas most English language sub-typing schemes for dyslexia (e.g., Castles & Coltheart, "1993") have focused on reading accuracy for words varying in regularity, such an approach may have limited utility for reading disability sub-typing beyond English in which fluency rather than accuracy is the key discriminator of developmental and individual…

Indices of physiological regulation (i.e., resting respiratory sinus arrhythmia [RSA] and RSA suppression) and observed fearfulness were tested as predictors of empathy-related reactions to an unfamiliar person's simulated distress within and across 18 (T1, N = 247) and 30 (T2, N = 216) months of age. Controlling for T1 helping, high RSA…

This study investigated how parenting accounted for interindividual differences in developmental trajectories of different child behaviors across childhood and adolescence. In a cohort sequential community sample of 1,049 children, latent class growth analysis was applied to three parent-reported dimensions (monitoring, positive parenting,…

Past studies have identified individual differences in infant visual attention based upon peak look duration during initial exposure to a stimulus. Colombo and colleagues found that infants that demonstrate brief visual fixations (i.e., short lookers) during familiarization are more likely to demonstrate evidence of recognition memory during…

Evidence that young children often claim ownership of their partner's contributions to an earlier collaborative activity, the "appropriation bias", has been attributed to shared intentionality ("Cognitive Development" (1998) 13, 91-108). The current investigation explored this notion by examining individual differences in the bias among 4- and…

The primary goal of this project is to provide a summary of extant research regarding humor in the classroom, with an emphasis on identifying and explaining inconsistencies in research findings and offering new directions for future studies in this area. First, the definitions, functions, and main theories of humor are reviewed. Next, the paper…

Unsworth and Engle (2007) recently proposed a model of working memory capacity characterized by, among other things, the ability to conduct a strategic, cue-dependent search of long-term memory. Although this ability has been found to mediate individual variation in a number of higher order cognitive tasks, the component processes involved remain…

Background: Allelic variation in the promoter region of a gene that encodes tryptophan hydroxylase isoform 2 (TPH2), a rate-limiting enzyme of serotonin synthesis in the central nervous system, has been associated with variations in cognitive function and vulnerability to affective spectrum disorders. Little is known about the effects of this gene…

A personalized e-learning service provides learning content to fit learners' individual differences. Learning achievements are influenced by cognitive as well as non-cognitive factors such as mood, motivation, interest, and personal styles. This paper proposes the Learning Caution Indexes (LCI) to detect aberrant learning patterns. The philosophy…