Search Results (799)

A consistent amount of research has tried to study the contributions of cognitive and emotional factors involved in math achievement. Despite this, research examining their joint role in children is scarce. In this paper, we examined the joint role of cognitive and math anxiety on math achievement in a sample of 135 seventh-grade children (54% male, M_age = 12.79, SD = 0.47). Math achievement was measured using a validated paper-and-pencil test, while higher-order cognitive abilities were assessed with a PMAs test. Working memory was evaluated through two verbal and two visuo-spatial experimental span tasks. Inhibitory control was measured using three computerized tasks adapted from the classic Stroop, Flanker, and Simon tasks. Math anxiety was assessed with an AMAS questionnaire. A series of correlation analyses and path models were conducted to understand the complex relationships among the factors. The correlations showed a positive relationship among our cognitive abilities and a negative correlation with math anxiety. The results from the path analysis showed a strong effect of higher-order cognitive abilities on math achievement (β = 0.44, p < .001) and highlighted the mediating role of working memory between math anxiety and math performance (β = −0.04, 95%CI [−0.11; −0.00]). Conversely, inhibitory control did not seem to play a crucial role in this relationship (β = −0.03, 95%CI [−0.08; 0.00]). These findings are discussed in relation to current theoretical frameworks. Interventions aimed at reducing math anxiety could help improve math achievement. Full article

This study investigates the potential of generative artificial intelligence tools in addressing cognitive challenges encountered by humans during problem-solving. The performance of ChatGPT-4o and GPT-4 models in the NAEP mathematics assessments was evaluated, particularly in relation to the cognitive demands placed on students. Sixty NAEP mathematics assessment tasks, coded by field experts, were analyzed within a framework of cognitive complexity. ChatGPT-4o and GPT-4 provided responses to each question, which were then evaluated using NAEP’s scoring criteria. The study’s dataset was analyzed using the average performance scores of students who answered correctly and the item-wise response percentages. The results indicated that ChatGPT-4o and GPT-4 outperformed most students on individual items in the NAEP mathematics assessment. Furthermore, as the cognitive demand increased, higher performance scores were required to answer questions correctly. This trend was observed across the 4th, 8th, and 12th grades, though ChatGPT-4o and GPT-4 did not demonstrate statistically significant sensitivity to increased cognitive demands at the 12th-grade level. Full article

The demands of the labor market are a constant challenge for universities, emphasizing the crucial importance of competency-based education to make our students more academically and professionally competitive. The benefits of Emotional Intelligence (EI) and Subjective Well-Being (happiness/life satisfaction) (SWB) have been evidenced as necessary competencies in personal, academic, and professional contexts. Our research assessed these variables in a sample of 300 university students from Madrid (Spain), comprising 68 (22.7%) men and 232 (77.3%) women, aged between 18 and 47 years (M = 21.72; SD = 0.42). Our objective was to determine their baseline levels, study their relationship with Academic Achievement (AA), analyze their changes after a positive emotional intervention, and determine if they are predictors of AA. For this, we used a quasi-experimental pre/post-test design with experimental/control groups. Our results show medium–high baseline levels of EI, SWB, and AA in our students; positive correlations, which improved in intensity in the post-test, between EI (clarity and repair) and SWB, between AA and EI (attention), and between AA and happiness (OHI); and better scores in EI and happiness in the post-test compared to the pre-test, and in the experimental group compared to the control group, as a result of our intervention. Finally, the findings indicate that EI (attention) and SWB (life satisfaction) jointly predict a small part of AA. The data are discussed for their implications for change in higher education, towards competency-based education interventions that improve the outcomes and employability of our students and bridge the university/industry gap. Full article

Recent studies have provided convincing evidence highlighting the strong relationship between spatial reasoning and mathematical performance. However, there is a limited body of research exploring the contributions of different spatial reasoning constructs to mathematical performance across various content domains, particularly within non-Western contexts. This study investigates the relationship between spatial reasoning skills—including mental rotation, spatial visualization, and spatial orientation—and mathematical performance across various domains (number, geometric shapes and measures and data display) among Chinese elementary school students in grade four (ages 9–10). The results indicate that overall spatial reasoning significantly predicts mathematical performance across various domains. All three spatial reasoning constructs significantly contribute to performance in the number and geometric shapes and measures domains, with mental rotation and spatial orientation being the strongest predictors of performance in these respective content domains. For data display performance, spatial orientation and spatial visualization significantly contribute, with spatial visualization being the strongest predictor. Although no significant gender differences were found in the overall link between spatial reasoning and mathematical performance, subgroup regression analysis showed variations. For male students, spatial orientation was the main predictor across content areas. For female students, mental rotation was the key predictor for number and geometry, while spatial visualization was most significant for data display. Full article

This study investigates the cognitive processes underlying chess expertise by examining planning, cognitive reflection, inter-temporal choice, and risky choice in chess players. The study involves 25 chess players and 25 non-chess players, comparing their performance on the Tower of London (TOL) task, Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT), inter-temporal choice (ITC), and risky choice tasks. Results indicate that chess players outperform non-chess players in TOL and CRT, showing superior planning and cognitive reflection abilities. Chess players also prefer future rewards over immediate ones in ITC, suggesting a higher propensity for future more rewarding options. In risky choice tasks, chess players made more decisions based on expected value than non-chess players, but the evidence in favour of differences between groups is very weak. Despite this study not being able to establish causality, the findings highlight the cognitive advantages associated with chess expertise and suggest potential areas for further research on the transfer of cognitive skills from chess to other domains and differences in general abilities between experts and novices. Full article

Critical thinking is a skill of great importance in our current and future society. Its value goes beyond all theoretical doubt although it requires more practical development, especially in terms of coordinated and evidence-based approaches. In addition, the ethical foundation must permeate the entire critical process, indicating what to criticize, for what, why, how, and when, elements that should not be left to improvisation or what is traditionally done. The aim of this research was to describe the ethical connotations that come together in the critical process. To this end, we focused on a group case study of undergraduate and graduate students of Psychosocial and Socio-educational studies in Spain, collecting information with instruments built ad hoc. The results show little practical awareness of the weight of ethics in critical decisions, producing a change in orientation regarding educational training to improve decision-making based on critical thinking and ethics. Full article

Gender differences in understanding the meanings of affect cues, often labeled emotion recognition, have been studied for over a century. Past reviews of the literature have concluded that girls and women score higher than boys and men on tests of accuracy in decoding affect cues, which are most often tested in the cue modalities of face, body, and content-free voice. The present meta-analysis updates knowledge on this topic by including many more studies (1188 effect sizes in 1011 studies; total N = 837,637) and examining a wide range of moderators such as health status of sample, international location, cue channels of the test, and other sample and test characteristics. Indeed, the gender difference favoring girls and women still exists, and evidence for publication bias was weak. The difference is not large (r = 0.12, d = 0.24), but it is extremely consistent across many moderators, which, even when significant, show minor differences. Health status was the only moderator to produce groups without a significant gender difference. Full article

Various studies on the formation of critical thinking in teachers express difficulties in the training of teachers at different levels of education. Some of them recognize conceptual dispersion evidenced in their conceptions and explanations; others recognize curricular gaps without clear and coherent programs for their development; and a third group recognize that training in critical thinking requires both academic training as well as personal training of the subject. Most of the studies agree on training teachers from all fields of knowledge, where theoretical and methodological elements are provided to form critical thinkers. For this reason, the present research, developed with five teachers from different areas of secondary education in which different sources of information were collected and analyzed, contributes to the reflection with different theoretical perspectives and methodological strategies used by teachers, which were contrasted with the theories of critical thinking (psychological, philosophical and didactics of sciences). Full article

While there is broad consensus that non-insight problems are typically solved through conscious, stepwise processes, the mechanisms underlying insight problem solving remain under debate. According to the special process view, insight relies on an unconscious restructuring that is susceptible to verbal overshadowing. In contrast, the business-as-usual approach maintains that insight and non-insight solutions both emerge via similar, conscious procedures that should be unaffected by verbalization. A third, challenging, perspective, the unconscious analytic thought approach, claims that the insight problem-solving process is not only unconscious but also analytic, instead of being merely associative. Actually, this process requires cognitive resources also works at an unconscious layer, suggesting that it can be disrupted by forced verbalization, which demands great cognitive effort. Therefore, according to this approach, being asked to verbalize the simultaneous processing of insight problem solving would hampers restructuring. To disentangle these positions, we compared participants’ performances on an insight problem and a non-insight problem under either concurrent verbalization or silent conditions. Our results show that verbalization significantly hampered insight problem solving, yet dramatically aided non-insight performance. Overall, our results provide evidence supporting the role of unconscious analytic processes in the resolution of insight problems, in contrast with the stepwise, conscious procedure used for the resolution of non-insight problems. Full article

This study was conducted to determine the relationship between emotional intelligence (EI), breastfeeding self-efficacy, and maternal expectations of women who did and did not receive education and counseling during pregnancy. An observational cross-sectional study was conducted in a state hospital with 146 pregnant women (intervention group, n = 72; control group, n = 74). The intervention group had five stages, while the control group received standard pregnancy care. Data is collected by the “Personal Information Form”, “Rotterdam EI Scale”, “Prenatal Breastfeeding Self-Efficacy Scale”, and “Prenatal Maternal Expectations Scale”. When the emotional intelligence scores increased in the intervention group, breastfeeding self-efficacy and antenatal motherhood expectations also increased in the intervention group. In addition, the intervention group’s EI, EI self-evaluation sub-dimension, prenatal motherhood expectations, unrealistic negative motherhood expectations mean, and breastfeeding self-efficacy scale were higher than those of the control group. The regression analysis revealed that the “self-evaluation” sub-dimension of the EI in the intervention group is correlated with regulate others and their own emotions, EI, breastfeeding self-efficacy, and prenatal motherhood expectations. This study shows that pregnant women who attended antenatal classes during the prenatal period had higher EI, breastfeeding self-efficacy, and prenatal maternal expectations than those who were pregnant and did not receive education. Full article

This study examines the relationships between critical thinking, metacognition, psychological well-being, and empathy using structural equation modeling. The study sample consists of 155 university students from a higher education institution in Spain, who completed the PENCRISAL, the metacognitive abilities inventory, the Ryff psychological well-being scale, and the empathy quotient, which assess these psychological constructs. The results indicate that critical thinking has a direct positive effect on metacognition, which, in turn, is significantly associated with higher levels of psychological well-being and empathy. These findings reinforce the essential role of critical thinking in fostering cognitive self-regulation and socioemotional competencies. Furthermore, this study provides empirical evidence supporting the integration of critical thinking into educational programs, emphasizing its potential to enhance reflective thinking, emotional awareness, and interpersonal understanding. Full article

Although cognitive ability tests are among the best predictors of job and training performance, their acceptance among applicants is limited. However, with the current talent shortage, applicant reactions to assessments have become increasingly important. Gamification is a promising approach for improving reactions to cognitive ability tests. However, it remains unclear how findings from low-stakes studies of gamified assessments generalize to high-stakes settings. In this quasi-experimental study (N = 210), we compared reactions to a gamified cognitive test from a low-stakes simulated selection setting with experimental participants and from a high-stakes selection setting with real applicants. Test takers in both settings completed the same gamified cognitive ability test and then rated several applicant reactions variables. We found a clear effect of the test setting with real applicants showing more positive reactions to the gamified test concerning perceived fairness, test motivation, organizational attractiveness, behavioral intentions, organizational image, clarity of work activity, and enjoyment compared to participants in the low-stakes setting, whereas there were no differences for perceived job-relatedness and opportunity to perform. These findings highlight the influence of test setting on applicant reactions and underscore the importance of examining environmental factors for research on the effects of gamification in cognitive ability testing. Full article

What shapes (occupational) success in later life? This study examines the differential importance of intelligence in late childhood, socioeconomic background, and education across later occupations. The quantity and quality of educational success are thought to mediate the other dimensions. We analyzed data from N = 4387 participants in a German longitudinal large-scale study in multiple regression and mediation models to examine how childhood intelligence and socioeconomic background predict income and occupational status at different career stages. Both childhood intelligence and socioeconomic background predict status and income in adulthood, with childhood intelligence being the stronger predictor. However, education is an even stronger predictor and—once included in the model—mediates virtually all effects of childhood intelligence and socioeconomic background. This pattern remains stable across career stages, and education has unique effects on income and occupational status in later work life, even when controlling for work experience. Our results emphasize the pivotal role of education in transitioning to the labor market and further development at work, even at later career stages. Given the stronger link between childhood intelligence and educational success in Germany than in other countries, we find that Germany is one of the more intelligence-driven systems. Full article

Creative idea selection is an important part of the creative process, but the current research on creative idea selection has not attracted enough attention, and this lack is particularly evident in the research on creativity focusing on adolescents. In view of this, in this study, centered on the creative process, we delved into the effect of the construal level on adolescents’ creative idea selection and whether there were domain differences in this effect. The effect of trait-level construals in the general and social creative domains on creative idea selection was examined in Study 1. The results showed that (1) the creativity of the ideas selected by adolescents with high trait-level construals was higher than that of those with low trait-level construals; (2) the creativity and novelty of idea selection in the social creative domain were significantly lower than those in the general creative domain of adolescents. To determine the consistency and stability of the effects of construal level on creative idea selection, Study 2 distinguished between high and low construal levels on the basis of state initiation. It was demonstrated that (1) the creativity and applicability scores for the idea selection of adolescents with high state-level construals were higher than those of adolescents with low state-level construals; (2) the overall creativity and novelty of adolescents’ idea selection in the social creative domain were significantly lower than those in the general creative domain. On the basis of the above results, the following conclusions were drawn in this study: (1) the overall creativity and novelty of adolescents’ idea selection in the social creative domain are lower than those in the general creative domain, but there are inconsistent results with respect to applicability; (2) both high trait- and state-level construals can promote the creativity and novelty of adolescents’ social creative idea selection. Full article

We proposed a novel approach to investigate how problem-solving strategies, identified using response time and eye-tracking data, can impact individuals’ performance on the Object Assembly (OA) task. To conduct an integrated assessment of spatial reasoning ability and problem-solving strategy, we applied the Multimodal Joint-Hierarchical Cognitive Diagnosis Model (MJ-DINA) to analyze the performance of young students (aged 6 to 14) on 17 OA items. The MJ-DINA model consists of three sub-models: a Deterministic Inputs, Noisy “and” Gate (DINA) model for estimating spatial ability, a lognormal RT model for response time, and a Bayesian Negative Binomial (BNF) model for fixation counts. In the DINA model, we estimated five spatial cognitive attributes aligned with problem-solving processes: encoding, falsification, mental rotation, mental displacement, and intractability recognition. Our model fits the data adequately, with Gelman–Rubin convergence statistics near 1.00 and posterior predictive p-values between 0.05 and 0.95 for the DINA, Log RT, and BNF sub-models, indicating reliable parameter estimation. Our findings indicate that individuals with faster processing speeds and fewer fixation counts, which we label Reflective-Scanner, outperformed the other three identified problem-solving strategy groups. Specifically, sufficient eye movement was a key factor contributing to better performance on spatial reasoning tasks. Additionally, the most effective method for improving individuals’ spatial task performance was training them to master the falsification attribute. This research offers valuable implications for developing tailored teaching methods to improve individuals’ spatial ability, depending on various problem-solving strategies. Full article