Cognitive predictors of achievement growth in mathematics: A 5-year longitudinal study.

The study's goal was to identify the beginning of 1st grade quantitative competencies that predict mathematics achievement start point and growth through 5th grade. Measures of number, counting, and arithmetic competencies were administered in early 1st grade and used to predict mathematics achievement through 5th (n = 177), while controlling for intelligence, working memory, and processing speed. Multilevel models revealed intelligence and processing speed, and the central executive component of working memory predicted achievement or achievement growth in mathematics and, as a contrast domain, word reading. The phonological loop was uniquely predictive of word reading and the visuospatial sketch pad of mathematics. Early fluency in processing and manipulating numerical set size and Arabic numerals, accurate use of sophisticated counting procedures for solving addition problems, and accuracy in making placements on a mathematical number line were uniquely predictive of mathematics achievement. Use of memory-based processes to solve addition problems predicted mathematics and reading achievement but in different ways. The results identify the early quantitative competencies that uniquely contribute to mathematics learning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Predictors of high academic achievement in mathematics and science by mathematically talented students: A longitudinal study.

Educational experiences of a cohort of 1,247 mathematically talented youths (initially identified in 7th/8th grade by the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth) were analyzed after high school and after college to identify factors correlated with high and low academic achievement in math and science in college by students with extremely high ability. Almost all students had achieved highly by conventional standards (e.g., 85% had received bachelor's degrees). Using a quantitative definition of academic achievement in college, we found that 22% were high academic achievers and 8% were low academic achievers in math and science. Variables predictive of high academic achievement (in order of strength) were precollege curricula or experiences in math and sciences, family characteristics and educational support variables, attitudes toward math and science, and differences in aptitude. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Self-efficacy and mathematics achievement: A study of their relation.

In this study, I investigated the relation between self-efficacy and mathematics achievement when other factors, such as self-concept of math ability, prior task achievement, and prior self-efficacy were taken into account. I assessed self-efficacy over 4 trials in a repeated-measures design with 72 children, aged 9–10 years. I assessed task performance after the first and third self-efficacy assessment. Regression analysis indicated small or no predictive relation between self-efficacy and task performance, depending on task familiarity, when these other factors were included in the analysis. Results of the study lend one to doubt that there is a simple relation between self-efficacy and task performance in the field of mathematics learning. The complexity of self-efficacy, its sources, and consequences are also illustrated. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's social behaviors as predictors of academic achievement: A longitudinal analysis.

This study was an investigation of the relationships among 139 third- and fourth-grade elementary students' social skills, problem behaviors, academic competence, and academic achievement. The primary research question addressed the relationship between social behaviors and academic achievement. All data were collected and examined at 2 time points in the school year, which allowed for a replication of the relationships among the variables and an investigation of the predictive relationships over time. The results from this study indicated that (1) social skills are positively predictive of concurrent academic achievement and (2) problem behaviors are negatively predictive of concurrent academic achievement. Only social skills were a significant predictor of future academic functioning. The linkage between problem behaviors and future academic performance may vary as a function of ethnic or cultural membership status. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's mathematics achievement: The role of parents' perceptions and their involvement in homework.

Two studies examined the accuracy of parents' assessment of their children's mathematics performance and how this relates to the time parents spend on children's homework. Fourth, 5th, and 6th graders completed a mathematics test. Their parents then predicted their child's test performance. Parents overestimated their children's mathematics scores (Study 1: 17.13%; Study 2: 14.40%). The time parents spent helping their children with mathematics homework was unrelated to children's mathematics performance, parents' predictions of their children's mathematics performance, and the accuracy of parents' predictions of their children's mathematics performance. Although increasing parents' knowledge of their children's mathematics competency should remediate poor mathematics performance of U.S. children, neither homework nor traditional report cards effectively inform parents regarding their children's mathematics performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Academic achievement and self-evaluations of academic performance.

College students often make informal evaluations of their own course performance. Previous research has shown that the accuracy of these self-evaluations is correlated positively with actual course achievement; however, no one has yet explained why such a relationship exists. It was hypothesized that poor students make less accurate performance evaluations because they know less about the criteria by which their work will be judged. To test that hypothesis, 52 students in an introductory psychology course graded their own work and that of others on both a midterm and a final examination and described their instructor's grading criteria on each occasion. As expected, poor students were less accurate than others at evaluating their own course performance. Poor and good students did not differ, however, in their ability to accurately evaluate the performance of others. The relative inaccuracy of the poor students' self-evaluations was not due to a lack of knowledge about the instructor's grading criteria, but instead involved a failure to apply those criteria to their own course work. (51 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's perceptions of smokers and nonsmokers: A longitudinal study.

In a longitudinal study we investigated 5th- and 7th-grade children's perceptions of smokers and nonsmokers, changes in perceptions from 5th to 7th grades, and the degree to which these perceptions predict smoking in 9th grade. The participants were 1,663 students from 14 school districts in Washington state. The results showed large developmental shifts from 5th to 7th grade in children's perceptions of both smokers and nonsmokers: Students at 7th grade saw smokers in a much more positive light and nonsmokers in a much more negative light than they did at 5th grade. Children's positive perceptions at 5th grade of smokers predicted smoking 4 years later at 9th grade and were stronger predictors than positive perceptions at 7th grade. The results suggest that smoking prevention interventions must begin before 5th grade to counter perceptions predictive of subsequent smoking. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A longitudinal study of achievement trajectories: Factors associated with change.

Using data from a longitudinal study of high-risk children (N?=?174), the authors examined deflections from predicted achievement scores on the basis of the discrepancy of observed scores from an established regression line (from first to sixth grade and first grade to age 16 years). Years in special education and socioeconomic status (SES) were related to changes in math achievement between first and sixth grade, whereas SES, child behavior problems, and quality of home environment were related to deflections in achievement from first grade to age 16 years. The environmental factors, quality of home environment, parent involvement in the child's education, and SES were related to improved achievement across time. These results suggest that early school, family, home environment, and child factors are important predictors of academic achievement deflections in late elementary and high school. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sex differences in learning mathematics: A longitudinal study with item and error analyses.

In a longitudinal study we examined children's mathematics performance on assessment tests given at third and sixth grades. We contrasted successful performance on six categories of items by sex and by grade. We also evaluated unsuccessful performance by means of analyses of errors on individual problems. Two primary results of the study were that girls exhibit an advantage at third grade that disappears by sixth grade and that consistent sex-related errors are observed at both grades. We give an explanation of observed sex differences based on cognitive psychology, with particular attention to how mathematical knowledge is acquired and stored and to the role of automaticity in problem solving. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cognitive-motivational characteristics and academic achievement of learning disabled children: A longitudinal study.

Academic self-concept, academic locus of control, and achievement expectations were investigated over a 2-year period for 78 children identified as learning disabled (LD) and 71 non learning disabled, normally achieving children (NLD). The LD children had no remedial program for their learning problems and had not been classified by the schools as LD. The data were collected while the sample was in junior high school. Five schools participated in the project. The results indicated that in comparison with NLD students, the LD children had lower self-perceptions of ability, showed signs of learned helplessness, and reported lower achievement expectations. These differences were well established at the start of Year 1 of the project and remained consistent through to the end of Year 2. The hypothesis that LD children not receiving remedial help would develop increasingly negative affective characteristics was therefore not supported. Correlation and regression data show that academic self-concept scores were the single best predictor of achievement levels. I suggest that negative school-related attitudes develop early in the school lives of LD children and remain negative but consistent through high school. Some consequences for future learning and remedial programming are considered. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Teacher-student support, effortful engagement, and achievement: A 3-year longitudinal study.

Measures of teacher-student relationship quality (TSRQ), effortful engagement, and achievement in reading and math were collected once each year for 3 consecutive years, beginning when participants were in 1st grade, for a sample of 671 (53.1% male) academically at-risk children attending 1 of 3 school districts in Texas. In separate latent variable structural equation models, the authors tested the hypothesized model, in which Year 2 effortful engagement mediated the association between Year 1 TSRQ and Year 3 reading and math skills. Conduct engagement was entered as a covariate in these analyses to disentangle the effects of effortful engagement and conduct engagement. Reciprocal effects of effortful engagement on TSRQ and of achievement on effortful engagement were also modeled. Results generally supported the hypothesized model. Year 1 variables had a direct effect on Year 3 variables, above year-to-year stability. Findings suggest that achievement, effortful engagement, and TSRQ form part of a dynamic system of influences in the early grades, such that intervening at any point in this nexus may alter children's school trajectories. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Learned helplessness in children: A longitudinal study of depression, achievement, and explanatory style.

Assessed the depressive symptoms, life events, and explanatory styles of 168 8–11 yr olds 5 times over a 1-yr period to test the prediction that the maladaptive explanatory style would be associated with higher levels of depression, lower school achievement, and higher incidences of helpless behaviors in the classroom. Ss completed the Children's Depression Inventory, the Children's Attributional Style Questionnaire, and a life events questionnaire. Measures of school achievement (the California Achievement Tests) were obtained once during the year. Depressive symptoms and explanatory styles were found to be stable over the year. As predicted by the reformulated learned helplessness theory, explanatory style both correlated with concurrent levels of depression and school achievement and predicted later changes in depression during the year. Depression also predicted later explanatory styles. Implications for intervention with children with depressive symptoms or school achievement problems are discussed. (35 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Academic control and action control in the achievement of college students: A longitudinal field study.

A contradiction to the typical pattern of academic success occurs when bright, enthusiastic high school students fail after entering university. Two measures, perceived academic control and action control (i.e., preoccupation with failure) were administered to 524 college students at the beginning of a 2-semester course. Achievement-related cognitions, emotions, motivation, and final grades were measured at the end of the course. High-academic-control students exerted more effort, reported less boredom and anxiety, were more motivated, used self-monitoring strategies more often, felt more in control of their course assignments and of life in general, believed they performed better, and obtained higher final grades. Failure-preoccupied students received higher final grades, which corroborated their self-reported performance. Of note, high-control, high-failure-preoccupied students outperformed the other 3 groups by 1 to 2 letter grades. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's causal attributions for success and failure in achievement settings: A meta-analysis.

Conducted a meta-analysis of 25 studies (1972–1981 [appended]) on children's attributions for success and failure to test the adequacy of the egotistic bias hypothesis (that attributions are more internal for success and more external for failure) for children in Grades 1–7. Variations in the wording of attributional questions and the research context were also included as factors in the meta-analysis. Results provide support for the egotism hypothesis and indicate that both question wording and research context are important determinants of children's attributions. In general, the egotism effect was supported more for informational than for the more traditional causal wording of the attribution questions. No effects were found for grade level. (47 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Role of mathematics self-efficacy in the structural model of mathematics achievement.

A structural model of mathematics achievement was tested with 117 male and 108 female high school seniors. Two attitude measures, 3 mathematics self-efficacy scales, and a mathematics achievement test were administered in the same order to all Ss. Teacher-assigned marks in a selected math course the Ss were taking were also obtained. The covariance matrices of boys and girls were analyzed with a 2-group LISREL procedure. The LISREL model specified math self-efficacy as a mediator between math attitude and achievement. The postulated model for similarly specified parameters was a good fit to the data for both boys and girls. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A longitudinal analysis of achievement goals: From affective antecedents to emotional effects and achievement outcomes.

Affect and emotions are frequently seen as outcomes of mastery and performance goals, but affective experiences may also predict goal adoption. In a predictive study (N = 669 first-year college students), the authors used structural equation modeling to estimate relationships from 2 initial affective experiences to mastery and performance-approach goals, from goals to discrete emotions, and from discrete emotions to final grades in a university course while controlling for prior achievement. Representing initial affective experiences, hopefulness positively predicted mastery and performance goals, whereas helplessness negatively predicted mastery goals. Mastery goals positively predicted enjoyment, which in turn positively predicted achievement, and negatively predicted boredom, which in turn negatively predicted achievement. Anxiety was negatively predicted by mastery goals, positively predicted by performance goals, and exerted a negative predictive influence on achievement. The findings suggest that predictive relationships between goals and achievement are mediated by students’ emotions. Results are discussed with regard to the importance of affect and emotions for achievement goal theory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relative reading achievement: A longitudinal study of 187 children from first through sixth grades.

This article reports results of a longitudinal study of relative reading achievement of 87 boys and 100 girls from 1st through 6th grades. Gates-MacGinitie Reading Tests (W. H. MacGinitie, J Kamons, R. L. Kowalski, R. K. MacGinitie, & T. MacKay, 1980) data were drawn from records of 1 rural school district in Eastern Canada. There was a systematic relationship between gender and reading categorization in Grades 1-3, with more boys below average, and no systematic relationship in Grades 4-6. Probabilities of 6th-grade reading-achievement categorization conditioned on 1st-grade achievement were used to challenge the stability of reading categorization reported in previous studies. The courses of relative reading achievement over the 6 grades of key subgroups of children were followed to show how reading-achievement categorization changes. The implications include a case for early reading intervention and for reconsideration of the view that relative reading achievement is largely immutable. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Curriculum and achievement in mathematics: A study of elementary school children in Japan, Taiwan, and the United States.

Describes a method for constructing a test of mathematics achievement for use in cross-national study. The mathematics curricula as presented in elementary school textbook series from Japan, Taiwan, and the US were analyzed according to the grade level at which various concepts and skills were introduced. Findings indicate that the Japanese curriculum contained more concepts and skills and also introduced these concepts and skills earlier than the curricula of Taiwan and the US. The curriculum was somewhat more advanced in the US than in Taiwan. Details of the procedure used in constructing the mathematics test are described. The test was administered to 480 1st and 5th graders from 40 classrooms in each of the 3 countries. Results show that Ss from Japan and Taiwan consistently performed at a higher level than their American counterparts. It is concluded that level of achievement in elementary school mathematics appears not to be closely related to the content of the curriculum. (10 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cognitive sex differences and mathematics and science achievement.

Comments on the original article "Sex Differences in Intrinsic Aptitude for Mathematics and Science?: A Critical Review," by E. S. Spelke (see record 2005-15840-001). Spelke considered "three claims that cognitive sex differences account for the differential representation of men and women in high-level careers in mathematics and science." The focus of this comment is on the claim regarding gender differences in mean levels of cognitive abilities. Spelke claimed (p. 954) that "most investigators of sex differences have concluded that males and females have equal cognitive ability, with somewhat different profiles." There are two major components to this comment. The first is mainly theoretical, and the second is both theoretical and empirical. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

School achievement and adult qualifications among adoptees: a longitudinal study

Data from the National Child Development study (NCDS) were used to examine predictors of attainment among adoptees, nonadopted children from similar birth circumstances, and other members of this national birth cohort. Adoptees performed more positively than nonadopted children from similar birth circumstances on childhood tests of reading, mathematics, and general ability, and retained this advantage in school-leaving and later adult qualifications. In addition to family SES and material circumstances, measures of the educational environment of the home and of parental interest in education emerged as central predictors of these variations. Further analyses suggested possible differences in the mode of operation of these variables between boys and girls, and at different stages of young people's educational careers.