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Although educational stratification research finds that educational tracking differentiates the development of cognitive skills and academic achievement, little is known about its consequences for noncognitive traits. This paper presents a framework for understanding how track placement affects personality traits and empirically tests its implications using longitudinal survey data from Denmark. I find that enrollment in the vocational track in upper secondary education on average increases conscientiousness by one third of a standard deviation more than enrollment in the academic track does. No other personality traits are affected by track placement. Additional analyses show that the influence of vocational education and training on conscientiousness is greater among students taking on an apprenticeship and learning a skilled trade, suggesting that such training closes the between-track gap in conscientiousness by fostering a skilled worker identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While research on metacognition and cognitive styles is robust for either field alone, few studies have broached the two together. In addition, no studies to date have examined finer-grained objectives related to specific aspects of metacognition such as monitoring skill and its relation to cognitive style. Thus, the present study investigated confidence, performance, and accuracy measures for three types of metacognitive judgments (prediction, concurrent and postdiction) and three different types of metacognitive questions--questions about the task, questions about the self, and questions at different moments (before, during, and after)--and how these are related to cognitive style (field dependent, intermediate, field independent) in a sample of 57 Colombian university students. Results revealed that there were differences in metacognitive monitoring accuracy and bias as a function of cognitive style, and that these findings were similar both between different moments and across metacognitive judgments. Regarding cognitive style, those with an intermediate or field independent cognitive style reported greater monitoring accuracy and less bias than individuals with a field dependent style. Implications for research, theory, and practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current analysis investigates genetic and environmental influences on the bidirectional relationships between temperament and general cognitive ability (GCA). Measures of GCA and three temperament factors (persistence, approach, and reactivity) were collected from 486 children ages 4–9 years (80% white, 50% female) from the Louisville Twin Study from 1976 to 1998. The results indicated a bidirectional dynamic model of temperament influencing subsequent GCA and GCA influencing subsequent temperament. The dynamic relationship between temperament and GCA arose primarily from shared genetic variance, particularly in families with higher socioeconomic status, where input from temperament contributed on average 20% to genetic variance in GCA versus 0% in lower SES families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: How does our personality relate to the ways in which we judge right from wrong? Drawing on influential theories of moral judgment, we identify candidate traits that may be linked with inclinations toward (a) consequentialist judgments (i.e., those based on the outcomes of an action) and (b) deontological judgments (i.e., those based on the alignment of an action with particular moral rules). Method: Across two studies (total N = 843) we examined domains and aspects of the Big Five in relation to inclinations toward consequentialist and deontological judgments. Results: In both studies, we found a unique association between intellect (curiosity, cognitive engagement) and consequentialist inclinations, in line with the view that deliberative cognitive processes drive such inclinations. We also found a consistent unique association between politeness (respectfulness, etiquette) and deontological inclinations, in line with the view that norm‐adherence drives such inclinations. Neither study yielded a significant unique relation between deontological inclinations and compassion (sympathy, empathic concern)—or any other emotion‐infused trait (e.g., Neuroticism)—as would be expected based on emotion‐centered views of deontological moral judgment. Conclusions: These findings have implications for theories of moral judgment, and reveal how our personality may guide our approach to questions of ethics and morality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Very few studies have examined whether the degree of adolescents' maturity has any effect on their academic performance. Moreover, there are no studies that show whether maturity explains variance additional to that explained by intelligence and personality. For this reason, the main aim of the current study was to determine how psychological maturity, the Big Five personality traits and mental aptitudes contribute to the prediction of adolescent academic performance. Method: 305 adolescents took part in the study. We performed correlations, multiple regression analysis and structural equation analysis. Results: As expected, results show that the main predictor is intelligence. The results also show that there is a relationship between psychological maturity and academic performance, although this is due only to the work orientation subscale. Moreover, conscientiousness influences academic performance because of its relation to the maturity factor work orientation. Likewise, openness to experience is also indirectly related to academic performance, due to its relationship with intelligence. Conclusions: The results of the current study suggest that psychological maturity is related to academic performance. Only two personality traits are correlated to academic performance, conscientiousness and openness to experience, although these traits do not have direct relationships with academic performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies have suggested a relationship between certain personality variables and work addiction. In the present work we conduct a predictive study of the background variables of work craving through the variables Impulsivity, Personality, Perfectionism, Self-esteem and Self-efficacy. The participants were 332 workers obtained by non probability sampling. We used the SPSS 23.0 program. The results of the correlation analysis show positive and negative associations with the variables studied. The regression analysis determines the predictive capacity of variables Emotional Stability, Perfectionism and Self-esteem account for 24.40% of the variance of Feelings Generated by Work (WCS.FW). And the predictor variables Emotional stability and Self-esteem account for 14.0% of the Need to Work (WCS.NW). It can be concluded that Work craving can be predicted through certain variables (Emotional Stability, Perfectionism and Self-esteem). This research contributes to greater knowledge of work addiction. The results have important practical implications to work that should be considered for the appropriate strategic management of human resources within organizations. The most notable among these are the need to promote the enhancement of self-esteem and emotional stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explored developmental and individual differences in intellectual humility (IH) among 127 children ages 6-8. IH was operationalized as children's assessment of their knowledge and willingness to delegate scientific questions to experts. Children completed measures of IH, theory of mind, motivational framework, and intelligence, and neurophysiological measures indexing early (error-related negativity [ERN]) and later (error positivity [Pe]) error-monitoring processes related to cognitive control. Children's knowledge self-assessment correlated with question delegation, and older children showed greater IH than younger children. Greater IH was associated with higher intelligence but not with social cognition or motivational framework. ERN related to self-assessment, whereas Pe related to question delegation. Thus, children show separable epistemic and social components of IH that may differentially contribute to metacognition and learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital technology is drawing more and more research attention in many areas of humanities because of its advantages in objectivity and automation. This work was an attempt to analyze two protagonists' personality traits and development, through their dialogues in a Chinese novel Ordinary World. We used language technology LTP, a Simplified Chinese segmentation software, to segment dialogues. Then, on the basis of eighty-eight LIWC (Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count) features, personality predictive models were recruited to calculate the Big Five personality. We obtained two sets of predicted Big Five personality scores through dialogues in general and those before versus after the protagonist's life events (high-school graduation and marriage). As expected, the two protagonists' (Shaoping Sun and Shaoan Sun) Big Five personality traits were coincided with the portraits in the novel, and the two protagonists showed observable personality development after their life events, which was consistent with previous studies on personality change. This work demonstrates the applicability and validity of literary intelligence analysis in humanistic texts, suggesting a reliable approach to analyze novel protagonists' personality in an objective manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research using the Big Five model of personality traits has highlighted the importance of personality traits to explaining diverse political behaviours and attitudes. The trait labelled openness to experience has also been found to positively affect political knowledge. This investigation seeks to distinguish two different components of openness: the aesthetic and the intellectual facets. An analysis of the 2015 Canadian Election Study (CES), the 2012 American National Election Study (ANES) and the 2013 ANES Recontact Study was conducted to explore this question. Openness had no significant impact on political knowledge when a measure that more precisely targets intellectualism, as represented by need for cognition, was included. However, open individuals did exhibit higher levels of interest in politics. Finally, openness to experience and need for cognition fostered political knowledge with frequency of political discussion and exposure to disagreement in the CES respondents (Canadians) but not in the ANES respondents (Americans). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research on emotions in aging points to emotional intelligence (EI) as a factor that plays an important role in this process, and different conceptualizations of EI show that this construct is closely linked to personality in the general population. The main purpose of this study was to find out whether findings obtained in the general population indicating a predictive relationship between personality and EI are also confirmed during the aging process. A sample of 233 healthy older subjects between 60 and 90 years old was used. Participants answered two self-report scales on EI and personality, respectively. Structural equation modeling was used to test the predictive role of personality in EI. Personality was found to be a predictor of EI in older people, and the weight of the prediction was significant in all the dimensions of the big five personality factors, except the dimension of neuroticism, which is known to vary greatly during the aging process. These results indicate that personality influences EI differently in the older adult population, compared to the general population. This is a relevant finding that should be examined further in order to better understand the influence of personality on positive emotional development in this population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The usual distinction between rational and intuitive thinking styles is still a subject of scientific debate, as there is no consensus about their nature, mutual relations and relations to other personality constructs. Cognitive-experiential self-theory (CEST) proposes rational and experiential thinking styles as original personality constructs not fully explainable by five-factor personality models. Following CEST, we aimed to examine: 1. The uniqueness of rational and experiential dimensions by relating them to other personality constructs: trait emotional intelligence (TEI) and HEXACO; 2. Thinking style profiles defined through combined rational and experiential dimensions, and the possible role of TEI in understanding them. A total of 270 undergraduate students (82% females) completed the TEIQue-SF, REI-40, and HEXACO-PI-R. Our results showed that constructs from all three paradigms were low to moderately correlated to each other. TEI had incremental validity in explaining both rational and experiential dimensions, but large amounts of their variances remained unexplained by both TEI and HEXACO. We revealed four thinking style profiles defined through combined rational and experiential dimensions. TEI was the highest when both dimensions were high and the lowest when both were low, which could be related to processes of understanding and managing emotional functioning - proposed as an essential part of TEI, while within CEST they are seen as the way in which rationality influences experientiality. This finding might be of specific significance for understanding irrationality as not exclusively related to high intuition, but to low rationality as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Understanding individual differences in cognitive performance is an important part of understanding how variations in underlying cognitive processes can result in variations in task performance. However, the exploration of individual differences in the components of the decision process—such as cognitive processing speed, response caution, and motor execution speed—in previous research has been limited. Here, we assess the heritability of the components of the decision process, with heritability having been a common aspect of individual differences research within other areas of cognition. Importantly, a limitation of previous work on cognitive heritability is the underlying assumption that variability in response times solely reflects variability in the speed of cognitive processing. This assumption has been problematic in other domains, due to the confounding effects of caution and motor execution speed on observed response times. We extend a cognitive model of decision‐making to account for relatedness structure in a twin study paradigm. This approach can separately quantify different contributions to the heritability of response time. Using data from the Human Connectome Project, we find strong evidence for the heritability of response caution, and more ambiguous evidence for the heritability of cognitive processing speed and motor execution speed. Our study suggests that the assumption made in previous studies—that the heritability of cognitive ability is based on cognitive processing speed—may be incorrect. More generally, our methodology provides a useful avenue for future research in complex data that aims to analyze cognitive traits across different sources of related data, whether the relation is between people, tasks, experimental phases, or methods of measurement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Positive psychology has influenced multiple subfields within psychology and areas outside of psychology. While positive psychology's focus on positive mental health and character strengths did not appear to meaningfully impact neuropsychology in its earlier stages, more recent indications suggest that the neuropsychological literature, and perhaps the field as a whole, has begun to embrace related research and practice applications. In this context, positive neuropsychology has emerged as a neuropsychological orientation focused on the study and practice of promoting cognitive health. The present review discusses the origins of positive neuropsychology and elaborates on its six key evidence-based domains: compensatory strategy use, activity engagement, prevention of cognitive impairment, public education, exceptional cognition, and positive cognitive outcomes in neuropsychiatric populations. This broad perspective on cognitive wellness can easily be embraced by both clinicians and researchers and offers multiple directions for future growth. Ultimately, consideration of various methods to promote cognitive health can inform our understanding of optimal brain function, maximize functioning in individuals with cognitive limitations, and enhance quality of life among populations served by neuropsychologists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By virtue of their extensive knowledge base and specialized training in brain-behavior relationships, neuropsychologists are especially poised to execute a unique broad-based approach to overall cognitive wellness and should be viewed as primary care providers of cognitive health. This article will describe a novel comprehensive cognitive wellness service delivery model including cognitive health, anti-aging, lifelong wellness, and longevity-oriented practices. These practice areas include brain-based cognitive wellness, emotional and spiritually centric exploration, and related multimodality health interventions. As experts in mind-body connections, neuropsychologists can provide a variety of evidence-based treatment options, empowering patients with a sense of value and purpose. Multiple areas of clinical therapy skill-based learning, tailor-made to fit individual needs, will be discussed including: brain stimulating activities, restorative techniques, automatic negative thoughts and maladaptive thinking reduction, inflammation and pain management techniques, nutrition and culinary focused cognitive wellness, spirituality based practices and mindfulness, movement and exercise, alternative/complimentary therapies, relationship restoration/social engagement, and trauma healing/meaning. Cognitive health rests upon the foundation of counteracting mind-body connection disruptions from multiple etiologies including inflammation, chronic stress, metabolic issues, cardiac conditions, autoimmune disease, neurological disorders, infectious diseases, and allergy spectrum disorders. Superimposed on these issues are lifestyle patterns and negative health behaviors that develop as ill-fated compensatory mechanisms used to cope with life stressors and aging. The brain and body are electrical systems that can "short circuit." The therapy practices inherent in the proposed cognitive wellness service delivery model can provide preventative insulation and circuit breaking against the shock of illness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Almost the entirety of research on effort in clinical neuropsychology has focused on negative aspects of effort in neuropsychological assessment, with most work over the last 20 years emphasizing feigned cognitive impairment. In contrast, few studies have explored trait-level positive influences on motivation and engagement in regard to neuropsychological testing. This paper reviews potential constructs associated with positive aspects of effort in neuropsychological testing, including conation, grit, Need for Cognition, and personality factors from the Five Factor Model of personality (Big Five). Findings are discussed from a positive neuropsychological framework, with an emphasis on positive effort being conceptualized as perseverance and resiliency in cognitively demanding testing situations. Challenges for the field are discussed, and we offer suggestions for conceptualizing effort on a continuum and recommendations for future research directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Researchers have demonstrated the prediction of academic functioning by children's prosocial behavior (PB). The goal of our study was to examine the contribution of adolescents' PB for middle and senior high school grades after controlling for stability of achievement and for intelligence, Big Five traits, and sociodemographic variables (i.e., sex and socioeconomic status).Method: Study 1 examined on 165 adolescents (48.5% boys) the prediction by peer-reported PB in 7th grade of academic achievement at the end of junior high school, after controlling for the above variables. Study 2 examined the prediction by 927 (52% girls) 8th graders' PB of academic achievement 5 years later, at the end of senior high school, taking into account the stability of grades, personality traits, and socio-structural variables.Results: Overall, hierarchical regression analysis indicated in both studies PB and Openness significantly predicted better grades in the short term and over time despite the high stability of grades across 5 years. Extraversion negatively predicted academic achievement across 1 year in junior high school.Conclusion: Findings supported the view of PB as a strength and a key resource for adolescents' academic attainment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today, one of the most important problems of human societies is the issue of stress among different people, especially patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder. Because this phenomenon is influenced by various factors, it can cause psychological, physical, and physical complications for the individual and the community. Therefore, it is important to investigate and identify the affecting factors on this issue. The present study aimed to investigate the relationship between emotional intelligence and personality traits with stress among 50 obsessive-compulsive patients in Shiraz by the using Baran's Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire, Personality Characteristics (NEO), and Conflict Stress Strategies (CISS) Andler and Parker (1990) with available sampling method. The results of the relationship between some of the components of emotional intelligence and stress showed that there was a significant and inverse relationship (sig < 0.05 & 0.01). Also, there was a significant and inverse relationship between personality traits and stress (sig < 0.01). Therefore, the findings showed that there is a positive and significant relationship between personality trait and psychological stress (sig=0.434). But there is a negative and significant relationship between other personality traits and stress at the level of Sig<0.01. Also, the results of regression analysis (multiple regression simultaneously) showed that, the components of emotional intelligence totaling 49% and personality traits totaling 43% of the variance of stress explained and were able to predict stress as negatively in patients with obsessive-compulsive. Therefore, it can be concluded that emotional intelligence and personality traits have an effect on stress reduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to provide empirical evidence for the relationship between openness to experience and L2 willingness to communicate (WTC). The study posits that openness as a personality dimension may have a dual effect—both direct and indirect—on one's L2 WTC levels. First, openness directly influences L2 WTC through its stable character, shaping one's cognition, affect and behaviour. Also, it has a possible dual indirect impact by mediating perceived communicative competence and language anxiety. According to the results of step-wise multiple regression, openness can be regarded a significant predictor of L2 WTC, explaining 21% of its variability. It may be concluded that students with high levels of openness demonstrate their stable predispositions to look for gratification through initiating verbal encounters in a foreign language. Together, the variables included in the model explain over 45% of L2 WTC variability, stressing the mediating role of perceived communicative competence (operationalized as self-perceived levels of FL skills) and language anxiety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study deals with the roles and interrelations of the meaning-based assessments of dwellings, pathways and metaphors in design performance. It is grounded in the Meaning Theory [Kreitler, S., and H. Kreitler. 1990. The Cognitive Foundations of Personality Traits. New York: Plenum], which enables identifying the cognitive contents and processes underlying cognitive performance in different domains, thus rendering them more accessible to educational training. The objectives were to identify the components of the meaning profiles of dwellings, pathways, and metaphors as perceived by design students; to analyse their interrelations; and to examine which of the identified components of these constructs serve as best predictors of design performance aided by the use of metaphors. Participants were administered a design task and questionnaires about the Dimensional Profiles of Dwellings, Pathways, and Metaphors, based on the meaning system. Factors based on the factor analyses of the responses to the three questionnaires were used in regression analyses as predictors of the performance score in a design task. The following three factors of the dimensional meaning profiles of metaphors were significant predictors of design performance: sensory, functional, and structural evaluations. Implications for design education are discussed, primarily concerning the important role of metaphor in design problem-solving. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Metacognitive skills refers to individual abilities for regulating and controlling learning behavior. Orientation, goal setting, planning, monitoring, and evaluation are manifestations of those skills. Given that metacognitive skills directly affect learning behavior, they are a strong predictor of learning performance. Students display a huge variation in metacognitive skillfulness, dependent on age and experience. In this article, metacognitive skills are considered to be an acquired program of self-instructions, that is, an orderly series of condition-action rules that contain conditional knowledge about when to apply which skill, and operational instructions for how to implement a particular skill. This notion has implications for effective metacognitive instruction in deficient students. Prior to instruction, on-line assessments of metacognitive skillfulness during actual task performance are indispensable for the identification of deficient students and for tailoring metacognitive instruction to the individual needs of students. Instruction should subsequently address what skill to perform when, why, and how (WWW&H), embedded within the context of a given task. Moreover, instruction should explicitly inform students about the benefits of applying metacognitive skills to make them exert the required effort. Finally, teachers may act as role model to students by including explicit metacognitive instruction in their lessons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the relationship between personal characteristics and attendance, engagement, sleep, and mood outcomes of persons with dementia participating in group activities. The purpose of this study is to examine which persons with dementia benefit most from group interventions. Sixty-nine persons with dementia were observed by research and therapeutic recreation staff during 10 types of group activities (reading aloud with discussion, choral-singing, baking, creative storytelling, brain games, active games, exercise, reminiscence poetry, holiday newsletter, and holiday discussions) on multiple outcomes (attendance duration, sleep, engagement, active participation, attitude, and positive mood). Correlations between these outcomes and personal characteristics (demographics, functional and medical characteristics, personal preferences for group activities) were conducted. Variables with significant correlations were then entered into regression analyses. Many of the personal characteristics were significantly correlated with the outcomes. Cognitive function was the most consistent predictor of all outcomes. Personal characteristics, particularly cognitive function, can predict the responses of persons with dementia during group activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the interaction effects of self-explanation and game-reward strategies on sixth graders' algebra variable learning achievement, learning attitude, and meta-cognitive awareness. A learning system was developed to support the learning activity, and a 2×2 quasi-experiment was conducted. Ninety-seven students were invited to participate in this experimental instruction and assigned to four groups: selfexplanation with game-reward, self-explanation, game-reward, and control. The results showed that (1) a significant interaction effect was found on the students' learning achievement of algebra variable: the selfexplanation with game-reward group performed significantly better than the self-explanation group, and both the game-reward group and self-explanation group scored significantly higher than the control group; (2) a significant interaction effect was found on the students' learning attitude toward algebra variable: the self-explanation with game-reward group reported significantly more positively than the self-explanation group, and the control group responded significantly more positive results than the self-explanation group; (3) no significant interaction effect was found on the students' meta-cognitive awareness of algebra variable learning: while the game-reward did not show a significantly positive effect, the self-explanation did. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The strength model of self-control has been predominantly tested with people from Western cultures. The present research asks whether the phenomenon of ego-depletion generalizes to a culture emphasizing the virtues of exerting mental self-control in everyday life. A pilot study found that whereas Americans tended to believe that exerting willpower on mental tasks is depleting, Indians tended to believe that exerting willpower is energizing. Using dual task ego-depletion paradigms. Studies 1a, 1b, and 1c found reverse ego-depletion among Indian participants, such that participants exhibited better mental selfcontrol on a subsequent task after initially working on strenuous rather than nonstrenuous cognitive tasks. Studies 2 and 3 found that Westerners exhibited the ego-depletion effect whereas Indians exhibited the reverse ego-depletion effect on the same set of tasks. Study 4 documented the causal effect of lay beliefs about whether exerting willpower is depleting versus energizing on reverse ego-depletion with both Indian and Western participants. Together, these studies reveal the underlying basis of the ego-depletion phenomenon in culturally shaped lay theories about willpower. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In studies of postural control, a control task is often used to understand significant effects obtained with experimental manipulations. This task should be the easiest task and (therefore) engage the lowest behavioral variability and cognitive workload. Since 1983, the stationary-gaze task is considered as the most relevant control task. Instead, the authors expected that free looking at small targets (white paper or images; visual angle: 12°) could be an easier task. To verify this assumption, 16 young individuals performed stationary-gaze, white-panel, and free-viewing 12° tasks in steady and relaxed stances. The stationary-gaze task led to significantly higher cognitive workload (mean score in the National Aeronotics and Space Administration Task Load Index questionnaire), higher interindividual body (head, neck, and lower back) linear variability, and higher interindividual body angular variability-not systematically yet-than both other tasks. There was more cognitive workload in steady than relaxed stances. The authors also tested if a free-viewing 24° task could lead to greater angular displacement, and hence greater body sway, than could the other tasks in relaxed stance. Unexpectedly, the participants mostly moved their eyes and not their body in this task. In the discussion, the authors explain why the stationary-gaze task may not be an ideal control task and how to choose this neutral task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing definitions of the self can be lumped into three groups: self as self-reflectivity, self as self-concept, and self as the individual. This article traces current disagreements over the definition of the self to a crucial ambiguity in William James's original delineation of the “Me.” Implicit in James's delineation was a distinction between first-order objects and second-order objects: while first-order objects are things as they are, independent of the perception of a knowing subject, second-order objects are things as perceived by a knowing subject. This article makes this distinction explicit and argues that the self is a second-order object associated with the first-person or “emic” perspective. Defined as the empirical existence of the individual (first order) perceived by the individual as “me” or “mine” (second order), the self is distinguished from the “I” which is the mental capacity for self-reflection; the self-concept which is the mental representation of the individual's existence; and the individual which is the empirical referent of the self-concept. As a second-order object, the “Me,” i.e., the self, is the unity of the existence and perception of the individual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The suspicion that language can become an obstacle to human knowledge is not new in the Western intellectual tradition. Following the empiricist legacy, many authors have suggested the perils and pitfalls of common sense language for science. Applied to psychology, this leads to the issue of the reliability of psychological language for scientific psychology. William James, in his Principles of Psychology , was one of the first psychologists to address this problem explicitly. The goal of this paper is to situate his position and contrast it with contemporary debates over the status of folk psychology. The results indicate that James conceived of common sense psychology in a very complex manner, and pointed to a kind of illusion that remains ignored in the current literature, with negative consequences for psychology. I conclude by suggesting the relevance of James for contemporary debates in theoretical and philosophical psychology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Metacognition is defined as one's own awareness of the thought process: specifically it concerns the ability to regulate the cognitive processes of the learners in their learning. Similarly, multiple intelligence covers the capacity to reason, figure and handle logical thinking. Therefore, it must be seen more as the "OUTPUT" function of information intake, learning, skills and ability. Hence, the present study is focused towards studying the level of metacognition and multiple intelligence among adolescents. The investigation was conducted on 200 rural school- going adolescents (n=200) studying in grade 9th and 10th,exclusively drawn from selected Government Senior Secondary Schools in the villages of Ludhiana-1 Block. The subjects were randomly selected and equally distributed across both the genders (males= 100 & females= 100). A self-designed socio-personal information sheet was used to collect the background information of the adolescents. Metacognitive Awareness Inventory (Schraw & Dennison, 1994) and Multiple Intelligence Survey (McKenzie, 1999) were used to assess the metacognition and multiple intelligence of the selected subjects. The results of the study revealed that majority of the adolescents had an 'average level' of metacognition as well as multiple intelligence. Further, results unveiled that across various components and sub-components of metacognition as well as types of multiple intelligence gender emerged as a significantly impacting factor where girls showed better mean scores than boys. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A neural synchrony model of cognitive control is proposed. It construes cognitive control as a higher-level action to synchronize lower-level brain areas. Here, a controller prefrontal area (medial frontal cortex) can synchronize two cortical processing areas. The synchrony is achieved by a randomtheta frequency-locked neural burst sent to both areas. The choice of areas that receive this burst is determined by lateral frontal cortex. As a result of this synchrony, communication between the two areas becomes more efficient. The model is tested on the classical Stroop cognitive control task, and its operation is explored in several simulations. Both reactive and proactive controls are implemented via theta power modulation. Increasing theta power improves behavioral performance; furthermore, via theta-gamma phase-amplitude coupling, theta also increases gamma frequency power and synchrony in posterior processing areas. Thus, the model solves a central computational problem for cognitive control (how to allow rapid communication between arbitrary brain areas), while making rich contact with behavioral and neurophysiological data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The moral and civic dimensions of personal character have been widely recognized and explored. Recent work by philosophers, psychologists, and education theorists has drawn attention to two additional dimensions of character: intellectual character and 'performance' character. This article sketches a 'four-dimensional' conceptual model of personal character and some of the character strengths or 'virtues' proper to each dimension. In addition to exploring how the dimensions of character are related to each other, the article also examines the implications of this account for character education undertaken in a youth or adolescent context. It is argued that 'intellectual character education,' which emphasizes the development of intellectual virtues like curiosity, open-mindedness, and intellectual courage, is an underexplored but especially promising approach in this context. The relationship between intellectual character education and traditional character education, which emphasizes the development of moral and civic virtues like kindness, generosity, and tolerance, is also explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is beyond controversy that in bimanual coordination tasks, parameter planning related to the movements of one hand influences the planning and execution of movements simultaneously performed with the other hand. A well-researched example of such bimanual interference is the finding that reaction times tend to be longer when preparing bimanual pointing movements with different amplitudes than for equal amplitude movements. Interestingly, these reaction time costs were found to increase when movement targets were cued symbolically (e.g., using letters) as compared to spatially. Therefore, it was suggested that interference may be primarily related to cue translation and response selection processes rather than resulting from cross-talk at the motor programming level. Here, we argue that spatial interference effects do not necessarily depend on the type of cues used but instead depend on the general task demands (difficulty). In two experiments we show that bimanual interference effects can (1) be abolished in symbolic cueing conditions when highly compatible cues placing minimal demands on response selection processes are used and (2) occur in direct/spatial cueing conditions when a secondary cognitively demanding, but movement-unrelated task is performed. Thus, our findings suggest that whether or not interference effects emerge during movement planning depends on the overall task difficulty and hence the resources available during movement preparation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the recent years, there is a growing interest to use the Ratcliff Diffusion Model (1978) for diagnostic purposes as the parameters of the model capture interindividual differences in specific cognitive processes. The parameters are estimated using reaction time data from binary classification tasks. For a potential diagnostic application of parameter values sufficient reliability is a necessary precondition. In two studies, each with two sessions separated by 1 week, the retest reliability of the diffusion model parameters was assessed. In Study 1, 105 participants completed a lexical decision task and a recognition memory task. In Study 2, 128 participants worked on an associative priming task. Results show that the reliability of the main parameters of the Ratcliff Diffusion Model (in particular of the speed of information accumulation and the threshold separation with rs > 0.70 for all three tasks) is satisfying. Besides, we analyzed the influence of the number of trials on the retest reliability using different estimation methods (Kolmogorov-Smirnov, Maximum Likelihood, Chi-square and EZ) and both empirical and simulated datasets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social exclusion has a profound emotional impact on children. However, there is still limited and partly conflicting experimental evidence for the possible effect of social exclusion on children's cognitive performance. In the present study, we tested the possibility that some children are more vulnerable than others to the negative effects of social exclusion on cognitive performance. We selected 4 potential candidates that could moderate the effects of social exclusion: relational self-esteem, peer ratings of popularity, rejection sensitivity and nonverbal intelligence. Individual differences in these 4 potential moderating factors were first assessed in a sample of 318 children (45.6 % females; mean age = 9.92 years). Then, in a subsequent experimental session, the participants were either socially included or excluded using a typical manipulation (i.e., the Cyberball paradigm). Following the manipulation, the children's cognitive performance was assessed using a logical reasoning test. The results showed that the children with lower scores for relational self-esteem (the bottom 37.46 % of the sample), lower popularity (43.49 %) or weaker nonverbal intelligence (37.80 %) performed worse on the logical reasoning test following social exclusion. Moreover, children with combined low self-esteem, popularity and nonverbal intelligence were the most affected by social exclusion. This study identified factors that make some children more vulnerable to the negative effects of social exclusion. Overall, the present work underscores the value of considering basic cognitive and relational individual differences when developing interventions aimed at preventing the negative effects of social exclusion among children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Although evidence exists for the efficacy of psychosocial interventions to prevent the onset of depression, little is known about its prevention in primary care. We aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of psychological and educational interventions to prevent depression in primary care.Methods: We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of relevant randomized controlled trials (RCTs) examining the effect of psychological and educational interventions to prevent depression in nondepressed primary care attendees. We searched MEDLINE, PsycINFO, Web of Science, OpenGrey Repository, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, and other sources up to May 2016. At least 2 reviewers independently evaluated the eligibility criteria, extracted data, and assessed the risk of bias. We calculated standardized mean differences (SMD) using random-effects models.Results: We selected 14 studies (7,365 patients) that met the inclusion criteria, 13 of which were valid to perform a meta-analysis. Most of the interventions had a cognitive-behavioral orientation, and in only 4 RCTs were the intervention clinicians primary care staff. The pooled SMD was -0.163 (95%CI, -0.256 to -0.070; P = .001). The risk of bias and the heterogeneity (I2 = 20.6%) were low, and there was no evidence of publication bias. Meta-regression detected no association between SMD and follow-up times or SMD and risk of bias. Subgroup analysis suggested greater effectiveness when the RCTs used care as usual as the comparator compared with those using placebo.Conclusions: Psychological and educational interventions to prevent depression had a modest though statistically significant preventive effect in primary care. Further RCTs using placebo or active comparators are needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The validity of Bucur and Madden's (2010) proposal that an age-related decline is particularly pronounced in executive function measures rather than in elementary perceptual speed measures was examined via the Yakumo Study longitudinal database. Their proposal suggests that cognitive load differentially affects cognitive abilities in older adults. To address their proposal, linear regression coefficients of 104 participants were calculated individually for the digit can-cellation task 1 (D-CAT1), where participants search for a given single digit, and the D-CAT3, where they search for 3 digits simultaneously. Therefore, it can be conjectured that the D-CAT1 represents primarily elementary perceptual speed and low-visual search load task, whereas the D-CAT3 represents primarily executive function and high-visual search load task. Regression coefficients from age 65 to 75 for the D-CAT3 showed a significantly steeper decline than that for the D-CAT1, and a large number of participants showed this tendency. These results support the proposal by Bucur and Madden (2010) and suggest that the degree of cognitive load affects age-related cognitive decline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vagally mediated heart rate variability (vmHRV) is a measure of cardiac vagal tone, and is widely viewed as a physiological index of the capacity to regulate emotions. However, studies have not directly tested whether vmHRV is associated with the ability to facially express emotions. In extending prior work, the current report tested links between resting vmHRV and the objectively assessed ability to facially express emotions, hypothesizing that higher vmHRV would predict greater expressive skill. Eighty healthy women completed self-reported measures, before attending a laboratory session in which vmHRV and the ability to express six emotions in the face were assessed. A repeated measures analysis of variance revealed a marginal main effect for vmHRV on skill overall; individuals with higher resting vmHRV were only better able to deliberately facially express anger and interest. Findings suggest that differences in resting vmHRV are associated with the objectively assessed ability to facially express some, but not all, emotions, with potential implications for health and well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

P3b is a prominent component of human event-related EEG potentials. P3b has been related to consciousness, encoding into memory, and updating of strategic schemata, among others, yet evidence has also been provided for its close relationship with deciding how to respond to the presented stimuli. P3b is large with rarely occurring stimuli and small with frequent ones. Here, we investigate the extent to which this oddball effect depends on selecting and executing responses. Participants pressed one of two keys in response to one of two letters, one of which was presented rarely and one frequently. Information about letter-key mapping was provided by a second stimulus. In different blocks, this mapping stimulus was either constant across trials or varied randomly, and either preceded or followed the letter. The oddball effect was reduced when responses were delayed (by waiting for the constant mapping stimulus following the letter) and was further reduced when responses could not be assigned to the letters (because letters were followed by varying mapping stimuli). This evidence suggests that P3b is closely related to decision processes, possibly reflecting reactivation of stimulus-response links. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Object recognition is a central human ability. In everyday life, the conditions under which objects have to be recognized are usually not perfect. Often, viewing conditions change in between two encounters with an object; typical are changes in illumination or in the object-observer distance. With such changes, object recognition sometimes feels slightly delayed. We examined this phenomenon empirically by measuring the latency of the well-established electrophysiological correlate of recollection, the late posterior component (LPC), in an object-recognition task. Although the cognitive processes underlying successful recognition are well examined, thus far the consequences of changed viewing conditions on the timing of these processes have not been investigated. The ERP technique is well suited for investigating this question, because it allows differentiating between processes contributing to recognition times (in particular, recollection from familiarity as indexed by the FN400 component) and measuring their time course with high temporal precision. In the present study, participants' task was to differentiate previously studied (old) objects from a set of new objects. Viewing conditions for old objects changed slightly, changed strongly, or remained identical between learning and test. We found that the latency of the LPC in response to an old object was delayed whenever viewing conditions changed. Moreover, this delay in LPC latency scaled with the size of the change. These effects were absent for the FN400. This is the first examination of effects of changes in viewing conditions on the latency of recollection and the first dissociation of FN400 and LPC latencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intraindividual reaction time variability (IIV), defined as the variability in trial-to-trial response times, is thought to serve as an index of central nervous system function. As such, greater IIV reflects both poorer executive brain function and cognitive control, in addition to lapses in attention. Resting-state vagally mediated heart rate variability (vmHRV), a psychophysiological index of self-regulatory abilities, has been linked with executive brain function and cognitive control such that those with greater resting-state vmHRV often perform better on cognitive tasks. However, research has yet to investigate the direct relationship between resting vmHRV and task IIV. The present study sought to examine this relationship in a sample of 104 young and healthy participants who first completed a 5-min resting-baseline period during which resting-state vmHRV was assessed. Participants then completed an attentional (target detection) task, where reaction time, accuracy, and trial-to-trial IIV were obtained. Results showed resting vmHRV to be significantly related to IIV, such that lower resting vmHRV predicted higher IIV on the task, even when controlling for several covariates (including mean reaction time and accuracy). Overall, our results provide further evidence for the link between resting vmHRV and cognitive control, and extend these notions to the domain of lapses in attention, as indexed by IIV. Implications and recommendations for future research on resting vmHRV and cognition are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent behavioral studies indicate that emotion counter-regulation automatically allocates attention to events that are opposite in the valence to the experienced emotional state. The present study explored the effect of emotion counter-regulation on response inhibition by using ERPs in a go/no-go paradigm. We recruited 58 subjects and randomly assigned them to either the angry priming group (watching Nanjing Massacre movie clips) or the neutral priming group (watching 'mending a computer' movie clips). The behavioral results revealed that participants in the angry priming group responded significantly more accurately to go happy and no-go angry faces than go angry and no-go happy faces. The analyses of ERPs revealed that the amplitudes of the no-go N2 and no-go P3 were significantly larger for the happy faces than for the angry faces in the angry priming group. However, no such effects were found in the neutral priming group. These results suggest that highly aroused angry emotion could prompt a priority response to happy emotion stimuli and restrict the responses to angry emotion stimuli through emotion counter-regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The startle blink reflex is facilitated during early picture viewing, then inhibited by attention during pleasant and aversive pictures compared to neutral pictures, and finally potentiated during aversive pictures specifically. However, it is unclear whether the postauricular reflex, which is elicited by the same loud acoustic probe as the startle blink reflex but enhanced by appetitive instead of defensive emotion, has the same pattern and time course of emotional modulation. We examined this issue in a sample of 90 undergraduates using serially presented soft acoustic clicks that elicited postauricular (but not startle blink) reflexes in addition to standard startle probes. Postauricular reflexes elicited by both clicks and probes correlated during food and nurturant contents, during which they were potentiated compared to neutral pictures, suggesting clicks effectively elicit emotionally modulated postauricular reflexes. The postauricular reflex was initially facilitated during the first 500 ms of picture processing but was larger during pleasant than neutral pictures throughout picture processing, with larger effect sizes during the latter half of picture processing. Across reflexes and eliciting stimuli, measures of emotional modulation had higher coefficient alphas than magnitudes during specific picture contents within each valence, indicating that only emotional modulation measures assess higher-order appetitive or defensive processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: A test battery that measures cognitive function impairment in patients with schizophrenia, the Brief Assessment of Cognition in Schizophrenia (BACS), has been translated into various languages and validated. This study aimed to test the reliability and validity of the Chinese version of the BACS in a Chinese-speaking population. Methods: All participants in this study (66 patients with schizophrenia [mean age: 41.2 years, 57.6% male] and 66 age- and sex-matched healthy controls) were from Taiwan and assessed using the BACS and the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) Performance-Based Skills Assessment, Brief Version (UPSA-B). Thirty-eight of the 66 patients with schizophrenia received a reassessment using the BACS. Results: The BACS had good test-retest reliability, and all BACS subtests had statistically insignificant practice effects. Principal components analysis demonstrated that a one-factor solution best fits our dataset (60.9% of the variance). In both patients and controls, the BACS composite scores were positively correlated with all BACS subscales (P,0.001) and UPSA-B scales (P,0.001). Furthermore, all BACS subtests (verbal memory, working memory, motor speed, verbal fluency, attention and processing speed, and executive function) significantly differentiated patients with schizophrenia from healthy controls (P,0.001), and the BACS composite score had the best discriminative validity (P,0.001). Conclusion: The Chinese version of the BACS exhibits satisfactory psychometric properties, including high test-retest reliability, high internal consistency, acceptable concurrent validity, and good discriminant validity. We suggest that the BACS is a reliable and practical tool for assessing cognitive function in patients with schizophrenia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Writing is a complex academic task-it involves numerous mental processes. Given the necessity for developing writing skills from elementary to secondary school, this study aimed to investigate the role of broad cognitive abilities derived from the Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) theory of intelligence in predicting skills associated with writing achievement. The normative sample from the fourth edition of the Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Cognitive Abilities and the Woodcock-Johnson Tests Academic Achievement were used to examine the relationships between broad CHC abilities and academic achievement in writing. The findings of this study suggest that the broad CHC abilities Comprehension-Knowledge, Processing Speed, and Fluid Reasoning are especially important predictors of basic writing skills and written expression during the school-age years. In general, changes in the strength of the association between cognitive abilities and academic achievement in writing are observed over time, as the cognitive demands involved in the writing increase in complexity in later grades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intolerance of Uncertainty (IU) is a key trans-diagnostic personality construct strongly associated with anxiety symptoms. Traditionally, IU is measured through self-report measures that are prone to bias effects due to impression management concerns and introspective difficulties. Moreover, self-report scales are not able to intercept the automatic associations that are assumed to be main determinants of several spontaneous responses (e.g., emotional reactions). In order to overcome these limitations, the Implicit Association Test (IAT) was applied to measure IU, with a particular focus on reliability and criterion validity issues. The IU-IAT and the Intolerance of Uncertainty Inventory (IUI) were administered to an undergraduate student sample (54 females and 10 males) with a mean age of 23 years (SD=1.7). Successively, participants were asked to provide an individually chosen uncertain event from their own lives that may occur in the future and were requested to identify a number of potential negative consequences of it. Participants' responses in terms of cognitive thoughts (i.e., cognitive appraisal) and worry reactions toward these events were assessed using the two subscales of the Worry and Intolerance of Uncertainty Beliefs Questionnaire. The IU-IAT showed an adequate level of internal consistency and a not significant correlation with the IUI. A path analysis model, accounting for 35% of event-related worry, revealed that IUI had a significant indirect effect on the dependent variable through event-related IU thoughts. By contrast, as expected, IU-IAT predicted event-related worry independently from IU thoughts. In accordance with dual models of social cognition, these findings suggest that IU can influence event-related worry through two different processing pathways (automatic vs. deliberative), supporting the criterion and construct validity of the IU-IAT. The potential role of the IU-IAT for clinical applications was discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is evidence that Finland's Swedish-speaking minority (Finland-Swedes) may have a distinct intelligence–personality profile from the Finnish-speaking Finns (Finns). We test this through an examination of the two groups' PISA (Programme of International Student Assessment) scores (which assesses representative samples of 15 year olds from OECD countries) and their personality scores, drawing upon a representative Finnish sample. We found Finland-Swedes to have slightly lower average intelligence. However, when controlling for gender and age, the Finland-Swedes score significantly higher on Conscientiousness, Extraversion and Emotional Stability. Overall, we found a Jensen Effect whereby most of the personality differences between the two groups could be attributed to the General Factor of Personality (GFP), which reflects the shared variance of lower-order personality traits. The GFP is assumed to reflect general social effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To investigate whether self-efficacy moderates the association between self-rated memory and depressive symptoms in a large sample of older adults. The influence of self-efficacy and depressive symptoms on memory performance was also examined in a subsample of individuals who reported poor memory.Methods: Non-demented participants (n = 3766) were selected from the 2012 wave of the Health and Retirement Study. Depressive symptomatology was assessed with the 8-item Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale. A modified version of the Midlife Developmental Inventory Questionnaire was used as the measure of self-efficacy. Participants were asked to rate their memory presently on a five-point scale from Excellent (1) to Poor (5). Immediate memory and delayed memory (after a 5-min interval) were measured by the number of correct words recalled from a 10-item word list.Results: Multiple regression analyses revealed that negative ratings of memory were significantly associated with greater levels of depressive symptoms, with this effect being greatest in those with low levels of self-efficacy. Additionally, greater self-efficacy was associated with optimal objective memory performances but only when depressive symptoms were low in individuals who reported poor memory function (n = 1196).Conclusion: Self-efficacy moderates the relationship between self-rated memory function and depressive symptoms. Higher self-efficacy may buffer against the impact of subjective memory difficulty on one's mood and thereby mitigating the effect of depressive symptoms on memory. Interventions should focus on increasing perceived self-efficacy in older adults reporting poor memory function to potentially minimize memory impairment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate educational differences in treatment responses to memory, reasoning, and speed of processing cognitive training relative to no-contact control.Methods: Secondary analyses of the Advanced Cognitive Training for Independent and Vital Elderly trial were conducted. Two thousand eight hundred older adults were randomized to memory, reasoning, or speed of processing training or no-contact control. A repeated-measures mixed-effects model was used to investigate immediate post-training and 1-year outcomes with sensitivity analyses out to 10 years. Outcomes were as follows: (1) memory composite of Hopkins Verbal Learning Test, Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test, and Rivermead Behavioral Memory Test; (2) reasoning composite of letter series, letter sets, and word series; and (3) speed of processing measured using three trials of useful field of view and the digit symbol substitution test.Results: The effects of reasoning and memory training did not differ by educational attainment. The effect of speed of processing training did. Those with fewer than 12 years of education experienced a 50% greater effect on the useful field of view test compared with those with 16 or more years of education. The training advantage for those with fewer than 12 years of education was maintained to 3 years post-training.Conclusion: Older adults with less than a secondary education are at elevated risk of dementia, including Alzheimer's disease. The analyses here indicate that speed of processing training is effective in older adults with low educational attainment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mindfulness-based interventions are believed to counteract cognitive biases that exacerbate cognitive and physiological reactivity to emotional experiences and that contribute to the development and persistence of psychopathology. One process by which mindful practices may produce such salutary effects is by enhancing the capacity to "decenter"-or to adopt a self-distanced, nonjudgmental perspective on conscious experiences (e.g., thoughts, memories, and feelings). Findings consistently indicate that decentering, assessed via self-report, represents an important aspect of mental health and well-being; however, numerous researchers have called for more objective measures of skills associated with mindfulness and decentering to further evaluate the mechanisms and benefits of mindfulness-based practices. Thus, in the current investigation, we developed a behavioral task that requires mental manipulation of negative emotional (and neutral) material away from the self (self-distancing), as a means to assess the skills associated with mindfulness and decentering that likely underlie healthy emotional processing. In 2 nonmeditating, university samples, we found that higher levels of self-reported mindfulness and higher levels of 1 facet of decentering (the capacity to adopt a distanced perspective on experiences) predicted behavioral indicators of self-distancing. Results suggest that the self-distancing task shows considerable promise for capturing skills associated with mindfulness and at least 1 element of decentering. (PsycINFO Database Record [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do separate factors of the social background – parental education, social class, social status and earnings – affect educational attainment independently of each other and to what extent is the association between these background factors and educational attainment transmitted via cognitive ability? Close to 28,000 randomly selected Swedish school children participated in a test of cognitive ability at age 13. Information on the four origin factors and on the children’s highest level of education was collected from Swedish registers with few missing data. The data were analysed by means of ordinary least squares regression. Parental education and social class are more highly associated with educational attainment than parental status and earnings, but all four factors have an effect on level of education independently of each other and of cognitive ability at age 13. Between 16 and 19 percent of the variance in education is accounted for by the social origin factors. Around one third of the effects of the origin factors is transmitted via cognitive ability. The paper ends with a short discussion of possible mechanisms, other than cognitive ability, that link social background with education. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]