Over the past 7 years the debate on educational policy in Germany has been greatly influenced by major empirical studies of educational performance in the tradition of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), notably the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), the Programme for…

Narrative understanding has been identified as a primary mode of human thought that informs us about the nature, causes and consequences of human actions and interactions and, as such, underlies social knowledge. Although considerable work has focused on exceptional narrative ability in children aged 12 years old or younger, to date there have…

Using a longitudinal, large-scale sample of British twins, we addressed the prediction of both cognitive abilities and behavioral adjustment from eight domains of environmental risk: minority status, socio-economic status, maternal medical factors, twin medical factors, maternal depression, chaos within the home environment, and parental feelings…

Service learning has been recognized as an effective pedagogical tool in the writing classroom. It has also served to help students develop an awareness of diversity and multicultural issues. In this article, the author examines the benefits of service learning in a basic writing course designed for students of color attending a disproportionately…

This study investigated growth in reading, vocabulary, and memory in children (ages 5 to 10) learning English as a second language identified at risk for reading disabilities (RD). A growth curve analysis showed that RD children were significantly below children not at risk in English and Spanish reading, Spanish short-term memory (STM), Spanish…

This article presents a framework for school administrators developed by Mesa Unified School district used in identifying and assisting the subtly struggling adolescents. Mesa's "safety net" approach targets middle grades students in the midst of their formative, pre-high school experience. Here, it is stated that the first step to identify a…

In this article, the author discusses several research reports demonstrating the existence of sex differences in cognitive function and language skills. Although dozens of studies published in the past five years have demonstrated dramatic sex differences in autonomic function, the educational literature has not emphasized those studies and their…

In order to study the influence on memorization of external inputs as well as children's own strategies, we examined both parental discourses in terms of distancing (Sigel, 1970) and spontaneous rehearsal by children during a memory task. Our aim was to assess the influence of each factor for children between 3 and 5 years of age. In our study of…

Effects of ethnic/racial diversity among students and faculty on cognitive growth of undergraduate students are estimated via a series of hierarchical linear and multinomial logistic regression models. Using objective measures of compositional, curricular, and interactional diversity based on actuarial course enrollment records of over 6,000…

Behavioural and emotional problems occur more frequently in children with learning problems than in a cross-section of the general population, both at home and at school. While behaviour problems reportedly are a key obstructive factor impeding inclusive education, children with both behavioural and learning disabilities carry a high risk of…

Research Findings: Integrated services for young children and families are part of the new policy landscape in early childhood, but there is limited evidence of the effectiveness of these programs and how they develop on the ground. This study examined the use of the Early Development Instrument (EDI) as both a summative program evaluation tool…

This study reports the results of a long-term follow-up of an exercise-based approach to dyslexia-related disorders (Reynolds, Nicolson, & Hambly, "Dyslexia," 2003; 9(1): 48-71). In the initial study, children at risk of dyslexia were identified in 3 years of a junior school. One half then undertook a 6 month, home-based exercise…

We are delighted to welcome you to the International Psychological Applications Conference and Trends 2013, taking place in Madrid, Spain, from 26 to 28 of April. Our efforts and active engagement can now be rewarded with these three days of exciting new developments about what we are passionate about: Psychology and its connections. We take pride…

This study examined whether scripts provide a basis for the categories preschool children use to structure their semantic memories and whether the use of taxonomies to structure memory becomes more common only after children enter elementary school. Subjects were 108 children in three equal groups of 18 boys and 18 girls children each of 4-, 5-,…

An influential proposal about aquiring mathematical knowledge is that it entails linking instruction-based concepts to intuitions derived from informal activities. In the case of non-positive numbers, informal knowledge is unlikely to emanate from observing physical objects, because non-positive objects or sets of objects do not exist. However, it…