Five experiments tested four-month-old infants' ability to recognize degraded visual targets as a function of individual differences in fixation duration. Found that short-looking infants were able to recognize degraded forms in both vertex (top or highest point)-absent and vertex-present conditions, but the vertex-absent discrimination was more…

Two experiments examined age differences in children's dual-task performance. Findings indicated that when capacity for single-task performance was controlled, age differences between second and fifth graders did not exist in performance of dual-tasks of equal priority. When tasks had different priorities, only fifth graders could differentially…

Examined individual differences in social cognition among 128 urban preschoolers. Found that individual differences in understanding of false-belief and emotion were associated with differences in language ability, parental occupation, and mothers' education. Variance in family background only contributed uniquely to false-belief understanding.…

Maintains that the findings of the Utrecht Study of Adolescent Development are consistent with theoretical expectations and previous research outcomes. Uses the Utrecht data to analyze hypothesized age differences in patterns of intraindividual identity status change. Discusses possible explanations for the partial failure to confirm this aspect…

Studied the associations between scores on a test of general mental ability and reaction time, measured with a "Hick"-style device, using a sample of 900 adults (aged 56 years) in Scotland. Results agree with literature reviews suggesting that reaction times and their variabilities are stronger correlates of mental test scores than are…

Examines the possible and specific relationships between first language (L1) acquisition and second language (L2) acquisition to show that a number of assumptions warrant closer inspection. Explores problems in distinguishing L1 from L2 acquisition from three different perspectives: individual language learner histories, the data, and the…

The last quarter of a century has seen significant progress in the identification and assessment of individual difference variables and an increasing awareness of the importance of seeing variables in the context of others, both in their effect on one another and their interactive effect on educational performance. Several challenges must now be…

Undergraduate students (N = 150) participated in a study developing a 10-item scale (the Noctcaelador Inventory; NI) to measure noctcaelador: adoration and attachment to the night-sky. The NI demonstrated good internal consistency, test-retest reliability, normality, and preliminary validity. The scale significantly correlated with self-reported…

There has been a considerable growth in the use of flexible methods of delivery for workplace learning and development. However, in designing programmes of flexible learning there is often the assumption that learners will exhibit uniformity in the ways in which they process and organise information (cognitive style), in their predispositions…

The aim of this article is to show that individuals differ in the way they solve spatial tasks of all kinds, and both research on and measurement of spatial ability could profit from an integration of strategy aspects. We first review evidence for both intra- and inter-individual strategy differences (including gender differences) in 3 domains of…

A comparison involving individuals in urban areas of India and the United States reveals both individual and relational concepts of self in each sample. However, cultural differences arose in specific ways in which individual and relational concepts are constructed. (Contains 7 tables and 2 figures.)

In this study, the authors introduce a new way to analyze cognitive change during social interactions, based on the mental model theory of reasoning. From this approach, cognitive performance can be improved for solving problems that require multiple models when participants in a social interaction group maintain qualitatively different models of…

We used Barton and Sanford's (1993) anomaly detection task to investigate text processing differences between skilled and less-skilled readers. The results of 2 experiments showed that many readers had the tendency to process text in a shallow or incomplete manner, frequently failing to detect anomalous nouns or noun phrases (NPs) in text such as…

Self-enhancement bias has been studied from 2 perspectives: L. Festinger's (1954) social comparison theory (self-enhancers perceive themselves more positively than they perceive others) and G. W. Allport's (1937) self-insight theory (self-enhancers perceive themselves more positively than they are perceived by others). These 2 perspectives are…

Impaired motion perception can be induced in normal observers in a rapid serial visual presentation task. Essential for this effect is the presence of motion distractors prior to the motion target, and we proposed that this attention-induced motion blindness results from high-level inhibition produced by the distractors. To investigate this, we…