Grade Expectations as a Function of Sex, Academic Discipline, and Sex of Instructor

Twelve hundred and fifty college students starting introductory courses in thirteen academic disciplines were asked to predict their grade in the course. Results showed that overall, males predicted higher grades for themselves than did females (p <.001). This held true for entering freshmen as well as for those with previous college experience. The phenomena was noted in 26 of 37 classes tested, including 7 of 9 in the natural sciences, 11 of 13 in the social sciences, but only 8 of 15 in the humanities. Sex of the instructor was irrelevant, raising the question of whether female instructors as role models have the positive effect upon women students that has been claimed. The differences found were slight, but persistent. Both sexes predicted very high grades. The data suggest that sex differences in prediction were not based on a female sense of incompetence, but upon a greater willingness among males to make highly positive predictions.     

Teaching Partial-Interval Recording of Problem Behavior with Virtual Reality

Journal of Behavioral Education - Virtual reality (VR) places individuals within a simulated experience using an array of visual, auditory, and tactile interfaces. Research suggests VR, which...     

Growth mindset predicts achievement only among rich students: examining the interplay between mindset and socioeconomic status

Social Psychology of Education - There is a heated debate about the efficacy of growth mindsets in predicting achievement and other key learning-related outcomes with some studies supporting and...     

Teachers with a growth mindset are motivated and engaged: the relationships among mindsets,motivation, and engagement in teaching

Social Psychology of Education - Past research on mindsets has mostly focused on studying students’ beliefs about the malleability of their intelligence or teachers’ beliefs about the...     

Toward law–gospel harmony in Lutheran theology and ethics

Lutheran antipathy toward the law is harmful to Christian ethics. This antipathy arises from the false notion that law and gospel are opposed. However, the Lutheran Confessions show that law–gospel distinction does not necessarily imply law–gospel opposition. When law and gospel are properly defined, they interrelate harmoniously within a multiperspectival model of Christian ethics. Moreover, the third use of the law then emerges as the basic and primary use.     

Cerebral blood flow in 5‐ to 8‐month‐olds: Regional tissue maturity is associated with infant affect

Infancy is marked by rapid neural and emotional development. The relation between brain function and emotion in infancy, however, is not well understood. Methods for measuring brain function predominantly rely on the BOLD signal; however, interpretation of the BOLD signal in infancy is challenging because the neuronal‐hemodynamic relation is immature. Regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) provides a context for the infant BOLD signal and can yield insight into the developmental maturity of brain regions that may support affective behaviors. This study aims to elucidate the relations among rCBF, age, and emotion in infancy. One hundred and seven mothers reported their infants' (infant age M ± SD = 6.14 ± 0.51 months) temperament. A subsample of infants completed MRI scans, 38 of whom produced usable perfusion MRI during natural sleep to quantify rCBF. Mother‐infant dyads completed the repeated Still‐Face Paradigm, from which infant affect reactivity and recovery to stress were quantified. We tested associations of infant age at scan, temperament factor scores, and observed affect reactivity and recovery with voxel‐wise rCBF. Infant age was positively associated with CBF in nearly all voxels, with peaks located in sensory cortices and the ventral prefrontal cortex, supporting the formulation that rCBF is an indicator of tissue maturity. Temperamental Negative Affect and recovery of positive affect following a stressor were positively associated with rCBF in several cortical and subcortical limbic regions, including the orbitofrontal cortex and inferior frontal gyrus. This finding yields insight into the nature of affective neurodevelopment during infancy. Specifically, infants with relatively increased prefrontal cortex maturity may evidence a disposition toward greater negative affect and negative reactivity in their daily lives yet show better recovery of positive affect following a social stressor.