Genetic and Environmental Influences on Achievement Goal Orientations Shift with Age

Students engage in learning activities with different achievement goal orientations. Some students pursue learning for learning sake (i.e. mastery goal orientation), some are driven by gaining favourable judgement of their performance (i.e. performance approach goal orientation), and others focus on avoiding negative judgement (i.e. performance avoidance goal orientation). These goal orientations are linked with academic achievement, and troublingly, students report decreasing levels of goal orientations across the school years. However, little is known concerning the mechanisms that drive this decline. In a large (N = 891 twin pairs) cross‐sectional genetically informative sample (age = 8 to 22 years), we found that older students reported lower goal orientations. Then, we identified shifts in the magnitude of genetic and environmental variance in each goal orientation. For example, variance in mastery goal orientation was primarily associated with environmental factors during the elementary school years. As students entered high school, genetic influences increased, replacing shared environmental influences. Finally, we situated these findings in the larger nomological network by testing associations with psychological constructs (e.g. personality and cognitive ability) and contextual variables (e.g. parents, schools, and peers). The development of academic motivation is complex with many interconnecting factors that appear to shift with age © 2019 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Randomized prevention trial for early conduct problems: effects on proactive parenting and links to toddler disruptive behavior.

Despite knowledge of early pathways to conduct problems, few preventive interventions are specifically designed to modify disruptive behavior in toddlerhood. One potential prevention target is proactive and positive parenting, which is associated with reduced risk of conduct problems in preschoolers. This randomized trial with 120 low-income 2-year-old boys examined whether a brief family-centered intervention that reduces disruptive behavior (D. Shaw, T. Dishion, L. Supplee, F. Gardner, & K. Arnds, 2006) also leads to increases in proactive and positive parenting. It also explored whether change in parenting predicts change in disruptive behavior. In the intervention group, proactive and positive parenting skills increased among parents of 3-year-olds. Change in proactive and positive parenting of 2- to 3-year-old toddlers correlated with change in child disruptive behavior, although the mediation effect of positive parenting was of only borderline significance. Findings suggest that even within a brief and multifaceted preventive intervention, change in proactive parenting skills contributes modestly but significantly to change in child problem behavior.     

Color and psychological functioning: the effect of red on performance attainment

This research focuses on the relation between color and psychological functioning, specifically, that between red and performance attainment. Red is hypothesized to impair performance on achievement tasks, because red is associated with the danger of failure in achievement contexts and evokes avoidance motivation. Four experiments demonstrate that the brief perception of red prior to an important test (e.g., an IQ test) impairs performance, and this effect appears to take place outside of participants' conscious awareness. Two further experiments establish the link between red and avoidance motivation as indicated by behavioral (i.e., task choice) and psychophysiological (i.e., cortical activation) measures. The findings suggest that care must be taken in how red is used in achievement contexts and illustrate how color can act as a subtle environmental cue that has important influences on behavior.     

A comparison of three methods of fitting the normal ogive

The Mueller-Urban method of fitting the normal ogive is derived, and the inadequacies of its inherent assumptions are discussed. This and the unweighted least squares method are compared to the maximum likelihood solution which is shown to be very close to the ideal least squares solution. As an empirical demonstration of the superiority of the maximum likelihood solution, random ogives are fitted by all three methods and they are compared on the basis of the expected values and the standard errors of the estimates. It is concluded that the maximum likelihood solution is uniformly superior to the others in all respects.This research was done under Contract Nonr-248(55) between the Office of Naval Research and The Johns Hopkins University. This is Report No. 18 under that contract. Reproduction in whole or in part is permitted for any purpose of the United States Government. This paper is part of a dissertation submitted to The Johns Hopkins University. Part of this work was done while the author was a National Institutes of Health Research Fellow.Now at The Biometric Laboratory, The George Washington University. The author is indebted to Dr. Wendell R. Garner for his valuable advice and encouragement, and to Jerome Cornfield for several helpful discussions.     

Risk Factors for Boy’s Conduct Problems in Poor and Lower–middle-class Neighborhoods

The joint trajectory analysis version of Nagin's (Group-based modeling of development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005) semiparametric, group-based approach for modeling trajectories was used to assess how boy's trajectories of conduct problems (CP) and neighborhood SES covaried from ages 5 to 12. Participants were recruited from Women, Infants, and Children clinics when they were 18 months old. Subsequent analyses examined whether boys from poor and more prosperous neighborhoods differed in the degree to which they were exposed to familial risk factors for CP during early childhood and the extent to which risk factors for CP were generalizable across communities. Findings revealed a small, but positive relationship, between boy's trajectories of CP and neighborhood SES. In addition, chronic CP boys from more prosperous communities were found to have more child/individual risk factors for CP than their counterparts from poorer communities. Implications for prevention and intervention are discussed.     

Effects of response priming and inhibition on movement planning and execution

The authors used a precueing method to examine the effects of response priming and inhibition on goal-directed action. Participants (N = 18) completed aiming movements to 1 of 2 locations following predictive (80% cued), nonpredictive (50% cued), and antipredictive (20% cued) precues at 1 of the 2 possible target locations. Consistent with previous research, participants responded more quickly to targets at cued locations than to targets at uncued locations in the 80% condition, and more quickly to targets presented at the uncued than to those presented at cued locations in the 50% and 20% conditions. As predicted by models of action-centered selective attention, movement trajectories deviated away from the cued location in the 50% condition. Movement trajectories were also altered in the 80% and the 20% conditions. Movements directed to the uncued location deviated away from the cued location in the 80% condition, whereas movements directed to the cued location deviated away from the uncued location in the 20% condition. The authors explain the latter trajectory results as a strategy of overcompensation.