Early predictors of high school mathematics achievement

Identifying the types of mathematics content knowledge that are most predictive of students' long-term learning is essential for improving both theories of mathematical development and mathematics education. To identify these types of knowledge, we examined long-term predictors of high school students' knowledge of algebra and overall mathematics achievement. Analyses of large, nationally representative, longitudinal data sets from the United States and the United Kingdom revealed that elementary school students' knowledge of fractions and of division uniquely predicts those students' knowledge of algebra and overall mathematics achievement in high school, 5 or 6 years later, even after statistically controlling for other types of mathematical knowledge, general intellectual ability, working memory, and family income and education. Implications of these findings for understanding and improving mathematics learning are discussed.     

Gender Effects on Organizational Problems—Evidence from Non-Profit Sports Clubs in Germany

In sports organizations, women are still under-represented, especially compared with their share of the general population. This holds true for management and leadership positions in particular, which could be explained by the lack of congruence between the female gender role and leader role. Therefore, the theoretical framework underpinning this study is based on role congruity theory. The research question is whether the share of women on the board and among members influences the perceived severity of organizational problems faced by sports organizations. This postulation is examined for a representative sample of sports clubs in Germany (n?=?13,068). Analyses of variance are conducted with the severity of organizational problems and the share of women on the board and among club members. The results show that the share of women on the board and among members has a significant negative impact on the severity of organizational problems. Sports clubs with a high share of women on the board and among members perceive the severity of organizational problems as smaller on average. This finding is related to female leadership style, which might serve as one possible explanation. Based on these results, it is recommended that sports clubs appoint more women to management positions. This study provides empirical evidence that the often postulated increase in the share of women can be beneficial to sports organizations.     

The effect of contour closure on shape recognition

Recent research on the Gestalt principle of closure has focused on how the presence of closure affects the ability to detect contours hidden in cluttered visual arrays. Some of the earliest research on closure, however, dealt with encoding and recognizing closed and open shapes, rather than detection. This research re-addresses the relation between closure and shape memory, focusing on how contour closure affects the ability to learn to recognize novel contour shapes. Of particular interest is whether closed contour shapes are easier to learn to recognize and, if so, whether this benefit is due to better encoding of closed contour shapes or easier comparison of closed contour shapes to already learned shapes. The results show that closed contours are indeed easier to recognize and, further, that this advantage appears to be related to better encoding.     

Emotion words affect eye fixations during reading

Emotion words are generally characterized as possessing high arousal and extreme valence and have typically been investigated in paradigms in which they are presented and measured as single words. This study examined whether a word's emotional qualities influenced the time spent viewing that word in the context of normal reading. Eye movements were monitored as participants read sentences containing an emotionally positive (e.g., lucky), negative (e.g., angry), or neutral (e.g., plain) word. Target word frequency (high or low) was additionally varied to help determine the temporal locus of emotion effects, with interactive results suggesting an early lexical locus of emotion processing. In general, measures of target fixation time demonstrated significant effects of emotion and frequency as well as an interaction. The interaction arose from differential effects with negative words that were dependent on word frequency. Fixation times on emotion words (positive or negative) were consistently faster than those on neutral words with one exception-high-frequency negative words were read no faster than their neutral counterparts. These effects emerged in the earliest eye movement measures, namely, first and single fixation duration, suggesting that emotionality, as defined by arousal and valence, modulates lexical processing. Possible mechanisms involved in processing emotion words are discussed, including automatic vigilance and desensitization, both of which imply a key role for word frequency. Finally, it is important that early lexical effects of emotion processing can be established within the ecologically valid context of fluent reading.     

Epistemic trust: modeling children's reasoning about others' knowledge and intent

A core assumption of many theories of development is that children can learn indirectly from other people. However, indirect experience (or testimony) is not constrained to provide veridical information. As a result, if children are to capitalize on this source of knowledge, they must be able to infer who is trustworthy and who is not. How might a learner make such inferences while at the same time learning about the world? What biases, if any, might children bring to this problem? We address these questions with a computational model of epistemic trust in which learners reason about the helpfulness and knowledgeability of an informant. We show that the model captures the competencies shown by young children in four areas: (1) using informants’ accuracy to infer how much to trust them; (2) using informants’ recent accuracy to overcome effects of familiarity; (3) inferring trust based on consensus among informants; and (4) using information about mal‐intent to decide not to trust. The model also explains developmental changes in performance between 3 and 4 years of age as a result of changing default assumptions about the helpfulness of other people.     

Domestic dogs’ (Canis familiaris) choices in reference to agreement among human informants on location of food

When interacting with others, informants may offer conflicting information or information of varying accuracy. Recent research suggests that young children do not trust all informants equally and are selective in both whom they solicit for information and whose claims they support. We explored whether domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) are similarly sensitive to agreement among informants. To this end, we utilized a common human gesture, pointing, to which recent research suggests dogs are sensitive. We conducted two experiments in which an experimenter secretly hid food in one of two clear containers while the dog was distracted. Next, a small group moved to indicate the food's location using stationary points positioned above the containers. In Experiment 1, two experimenters moved to stand behind the non-baited container, while a third experimenter moved to stand behind the baited container. Then, all directed one static point at the container in front of them. Experiment 2 exactly resembled Experiment 1 with the exception that the single experimenter standing behind the baited container directed two static points at the container (one with each hand). Dogs chose the container indicated by the majority in Experiment 1 significantly more often than chance, but chose the container indicated by the minority in Experiment 2 significantly more often than chance. This suggests that the number of points, not the number of people, more strongly influenced dogs' choices.     

Do Muslims in Germany Really Fail to Integrate? Muslim Integration and Trust in Public Institutions

Multivariate analysis of 2008 data from the German Social Survey (ALLBUS) provides firm evidence on the basis of one important dimension of political integration??individuals?? trust in the political system??that Muslims are integrating well into German society. The results are significant despite controls for multiple indicators of respondents?? social capital, socioeconomic status, post-material views, ideological position, partisan support for parties in power, assessment of government performance, interest in politics, and amount of television viewing. Furthermore, Muslims?? level of religiosity does not influence their level of political trust. The findings raise new questions about integration in that the significantly lower levels of political trust found among non-Muslims may negatively affect their views of government and its efforts to respond to Germany??s Muslim population. Skepticism and distrust of government by non-Muslim ethnic Germans may undermine important programs designed to bridge the actual value and cultural differences which remain the source of the ignorance that fuels prejudice and discrimination.     

Can an anger face also be scared? Malleability of facial expressions

Do people always interpret a facial expression as communicating a single emotion (e.g., the anger face as only angry) or is that interpretation malleable? The current study investigated preschoolers' (N = 60; 3-4 years) and adults' (N = 20) categorization of facial expressions. On each of five trials, participants selected from an array of 10 facial expressions (an open-mouthed, high arousal expression and a closed-mouthed, low arousal expression each for happiness, sadness, anger, fear, and disgust) all those that displayed the target emotion. Children's interpretation of facial expressions was malleable: 48% of children who selected the fear, anger, sadness, and disgust faces for the "correct" category also selected these same faces for another emotion category; 47% of adults did so for the sadness and disgust faces. The emotion children and adults attribute to facial expressions is influenced by the emotion category for which they are looking. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).