Considerable research suggests a link between mind wandering and diminished levels of motivation and interest. During episodes of mind wandering, individuals may engage in efforts to redirect their attention back to the task at hand (known as focus back effort). Building on the resource-control hypothesis, we hypothesized that the influence of…

Math-anxious people consistently underperform in math. The most widely accepted explanation for "why" this underperformance occurs is that math-anxious people experience heightened anxiety when faced with math, and this in-the-moment anxiety interferes with performance. Surprisingly, this explanation has not been tested directly. Here,…

Mike accidentally knocked against a bottle. Seeing that the bottle was about to fall, Jack was just about to catch it when Peter accidentally knocked against him, making Jack unable to catch it. Jack did not grab the bottle, and it fell to the ground and spilled. In double-prevention cases like these, philosophers and nonphilosophers alike tend to…

Play is often included in autism diagnostic assessments. These tend to focus on 'deficits' and non-autistic interpretation of observable behaviours. In contrast, a neurodiversity-affirmative assessment approach involves centring autistic perspectives and focusing on strengths, differences and needs. Accordingly, this study was designed to focus on…

In this paper, we describe two empirical studies that demonstrate the application and modeling of keystroke logs in writing assessments. We illustrate two different approaches of modeling differences in writing processes: analysis of mean differences in handcrafted theory-driven features and use of large language models to identify stable personal…

Cognitive tasks are seldom evaluated on their ability to provide valid and reliable measurements of the construct they intend to measure. This scarcity of psychometric evaluations makes it challenging to evaluate replications of experimental effects and to relate performance in cognitive tasks to other constructs of interest. In developmental…

Causal inference is a fundamental goal of many research endeavors, including scholarship in the field of language education and learning. Randomized controlled trials are considered an ideal design to test causal claims, but not all claims can be subjected to experimental treatment due to ethical and practical constraints. In this article, we…

The goal of the present study was to test theories about the extent to which individual differences in word reading align with those in spelling and the extent to which other cognitive and linguistic skills play different roles in word reading and spelling. Using data from 1,116 children ranging from 8 to 17 years, we modeled word reading and…

"Broaching" is defined as a process of discussing racial, cultural, and ethnic differences between a client and counselor for the purposes of strengthening the therapeutic relationship and alliance (Day-Vines et al., 2007). However, the literature is scarce on strategies for preparing counselors to adopt and engage in broaching attitudes…

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to explore the importance of individual learner differences and the effect differentiated instruction (DI) has on learners' levels of engagement. Design/methodology/approach: The author carried out this research using a small-scale action research (AR) study. Findings: The findings suggest that in acknowledging…

Bullying is a public health menace of global significance. Personality traits have been shown to predict bullying roles. This study aimed to assess the prevalence of bullying and its relationship with the Big-Five personality traits among Nigerian in-school adolescents. Four hundred and thirty-two adolescents aged between 12 and 18 years (M =…

This study used idiodynamic methodology to investigate the dynamics of second language (L2) learners' foreign language anxiety (FLA) and foreign language enjoyment (FLE), and the details of emotion regulation (ER) directed at managing these emotions, in pair- and group-work speaking tasks performed by 10 advanced English-as-a-foreign-language…

Educational tracking can lead to different citizenship outcomes. Most studies on the relationship between citizenship and educational track membership applied a variable-centered approach, comparing averages between tracks but not considering differences between students within a track. Person-centered approaches have shown that different…

In young adults and adolescents, dyslexia typically is characterized by slow or laborious reading. These reading difficulties are underpinned at least partly by a phonological deficit that disrupts cognitive connections between spoken and written language. Prosodic stress is a phonological property of spoken language reflecting differences in…

We investigated the relations between self-reported math anxiety, task difficulty, and pupil dilation in adults and very young children during math tasks of varying difficulty levels. While task difficulty significantly influenced pupillary responses in both groups, the association between self-reported math anxiety and pupil dilation differed…