Correction to: From Teachers’ Work Engagement to Pupils’ Positive Affect: a Weekly Diary Study on the Role of Pupils’ Autonomous Motivation

Applied Research in Quality of Life - A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11482-021-09935-5     

Links between Family Social Status and Preschoolers' Persistence: The Role of Maternal Values and Quality of Parenting

Children who develop persistence in the preschool years are likely to function more effectively during the transition into school. In this study of 231 3‐year‐old children and their mothers, we examined the relations among family social status, maternal values of self‐direction, quality of parenting, and children's persistence in challenging tasks. Results of structural equation modelling path analysis indicated that family social status was related to maternal values of self‐direction, which in turn were associated with the quality of maternal cognitive stimulation and emotional support and child persistence at preschool age. Family social status and maternal values were indirectly related to child persistence through emotional support. Focusing on parental values of self‐direction and provision of support during challenging tasks may help to reduce the gap in school success between children from lower and higher social status families. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Having Responsive Facebook Friends Affects the Satisfaction of Psychological Needs More Than Having Many Facebook Friends

The use of social networking sites, such as Facebook, provides ample opportunities for the pursuit of interpersonal connection but may also bring to mind one's social isolation. The present research examined the effects of interpersonal neglect (i.e., low number of responding Facebook friends) on the satisfaction of fundamental human needs. Two studies revealed that receiving few responses from one's Facebook friends threatens the needs for belonging, self-esteem, control, and meaningful existence. These effects were observable over and above the impact of general social connection to others (i.e., total number of Facebook friends) and tone of responses.     

A study of the dynamics of sex differences in adulthood

Studies of gender differences using primarily young individuals show that males, on average, perform better than females in physical activities but worse than females on tests of verbal abilities. There is however a controversy about the existence of these sex differences in adulthood. Our study used 1271 participants from four cultural backgrounds (Chinese, multi‐generation Canadians, Indu‐Canadians, and European‐Canadians) divided in five age groups. We measured sex differences in the time required for participants to complete a lexical task experiment, and also assessed their verbal tempo and physical endurance using a validated temperament test (Structure of Temperament Questionnaire). We found a significant female advantage in time on the lexical task and on the temperament scale of social–verbal tempo, and a male advantage on the temperament scale of physical endurance. These sex differences, however, were more pronounced in young age groups (17–24), fading in older groups. This “middle age–middle sex” phenomenon suggests that sex differences in these two types of abilities observed in younger groups might be “a matter of age,” and should not be attributed to gender in general. A one‐dimensional approach to sex differences (common in meta‐analytic studies) therefore overlooks a possible interaction of sex differences with age.     

An investigation into differences between the structure of temperament and the structure of personality

This article analyzes the differences between an activity-specific temperament model and the Big Five personality model using the Structure of Temperament Questionnaire--Compact (STQ-77). The STQ-77 has 3 emotionality scales and 9 scales assessing 3 dynamic aspects (arousal, lability, and sensory sensitivity) in 3 areas of activity (physical, verbal-social, and mental). The results of administration of the Russian STQ-77, NEO-FFI, and SSS-V to 174 Russian participants showed how components of temperament can represent the traits described in the Big Five model. The confirmatory factor analysis of the English STQ-77 and the results of a study involving a prolonged word classification task with 221 Canadian participants showed the benefits of the activity-specific approach, separating temperament traits in three areas of activity. Such specificity of temperament traits differentiates them from personality traits.     

Increasing task difficulty enhances effects of intersensory redundancy: testing a new prediction of the Intersensory Redundancy Hypothesis

Prior research has demonstrated intersensory facilitation for perception of amodal properties of events such as tempo and rhythm in early development, supporting predictions of the Intersensory Redundancy Hypothesis (IRH). Specifically, infants discriminate amodal properties in bimodal, redundant stimulation but not in unimodal, nonredundant stimulation in early development, whereas later in development infants can detect amodal properties in both redundant and nonredundant stimulation. The present study tested a new prediction of the IRH: that effects of intersensory redundancy on attention and perceptual processing are most apparent in tasks of high difficulty relative to the skills of the perceiver. We assessed whether by increasing task difficulty, older infants would revert to patterns of intersensory facilitation shown by younger infants. Results confirmed our prediction and demonstrated that in difficult tempo discrimination tasks, 5‐month‐olds perform like 3‐month‐olds, showing intersensory facilitation for tempo discrimination. In contrast, in tasks of low and moderate difficulty, 5‐month‐olds discriminate tempo changes in both redundant audiovisual and nonredundant unimodal visual stimulation. These findings indicate that intersensory facilitation is most apparent for tasks of relatively high difficulty and may therefore persist across the lifespan.     

Development of approximate number sense across the elementary school years: A cross‐cultural longitudinal study

In recent years, there has been growing interest among researchers in exploring approximate number sense (ANS)—the ability to estimate and discriminate quantities without the use of symbols. Despite the growing number of studies on ANS, there have been no cross‐cultural longitudinal studies to estimate both the development of ANS and the cross‐cultural differences in ANS growth trajectories. In this study, we aimed to estimate the developmental trajectories of ANS from the beginning of formal education to the end of elementary school in two countries, Russia and Kyrgyzstan, which have similar organization of their educational systems but differences in socioeconomic status (SES) and in the results of large‐scale educational assessments. To assess the developmental trajectories of ANS, we used a four‐wave longitudinal study with 416 participants from two countries and applied the mixed effect growth approach and the latent class growth approach. Our analysis revealed that the rate of growth in ANS accuracy was higher for the Russian sample than for the Kyrgyz sample and that this difference remained significant even after controlling for fluid intelligence. We identified two latent classes of growth trajectories: the first class had a significant growth in ANS, whereas the second class had no growth. Comparing the distribution of latent classes within the two countries revealed that there was a significantly larger proportion of schoolchildren from the second class in Kyrgyzstan than in Russia.