Evolution of Self-Awareness and the Cultural Emergence of Academic and Non-academic Self-Concepts.

Schooling is ubiquitous in the modern world and academic development is now a critical aspect of preparation for adulthood. A step back in time to pre-modern societies and an examination of life in remaining traditional societies today reveals that universal formal schooling is an historically recent phenomenon. This evolutionary and historical recency has profound implications for understanding academic development, including how instructional practices modify evolved or biological primary abilities (e.g., spoken language) to create evolutionarily novel or biologically secondary academic competencies (e.g., reading). We propose the development of secondary abilities promotes the emergence of academic self-concepts that in turn are supported by evolved systems for self-awareness and self-knowledge. Unlike some forms of self-knowledge (e.g., relative physical abilities) that appear to be universal and central to many people's overall self-concept, the relative importance of academic self-concepts are expected to be dependent on explicit social and cultural supports for their valuation. These culturally contingent self-concepts are contrasted with universal social and physical self-concepts, with implications for understanding variation students' relative valuation of academic competencies and their motivations to engage in academic learning.

Social Presence: Conceptualization and Measurement.

Social presence is an important construct in online group learning. It influences the way how social interaction unfolds online and affects learning and social outcomes. However, what precisely social presence is has been under debate, as presently a plethora of different definitions and measures exist preventing the development of a coherent research field regarding social presence and its defining role in online group learning. To solve the issue, we went back to the original social presence theory as devised by the communication researchers Short et al. (1976) to show that although they had a clear idea of social presence-namely "realness" of other persons in the interaction-their definition is ambiguous, not operationalizable, and the measurement of it questionable. We, therefore, disentangled their social presence theory and (1) reformulated the social presence definition to enable an operationalization in line with the previous conceptualization of social presence; (2) departed from the technological determinism of social presence; and (3) identified two other constructs closely linked to social presence, namely, sociability (as a medium attribute) and social space (as a group attribute). By reformulating the definition of social presence and by linking it to social space and sociability, we hope to contribute to a more coherent line of social presence research and to better understand interpersonal communication, group learning, and group dynamics when learning and working together in an online setting.

The Relation Between Cognitively Measured Executive Functions and Reported Self-Regulated Learning Strategy Use in Adult Online Distance Education.

While executive functions (EFs) and self-regulated learning (SRL) strategy use have been found to be related in several populations, this relationship has not been studied in adult online distance education (ODE). This is surprising as self-regulation, and thus using such strategies, is very important here. In this setting, we studied the relation between basic executive functions (i.e., working memory and shifting, measured with cognitive tests) and reported SRL-strategy use (i.e., management of time and effort, complex and simple cognitive strategy use, contacts with others, and academic thinking) within a correlational design with 889 adult online distance students. In this study, we performed regression analyses and took age and processing speed into consideration, as processing speed and EFs decrease with age, whereas self-regulation is reported to increase with age. Cognitively measured working memory was not related to reported SRL-strategy use in adult ODE students. Thus, even though the SRL-components within the strategies seem to elicit working memory, reported SRL-strategy use is not related to the functioning of this basic EF (measured with cognitive tests). This means that if SRL-strategy use needs to be increased in adult ODE students, training of working memory might not be an effective manner for achieving that goal. Better shifting and processing speed were related to less reported SRL-strategy use, which might suggest that SRL-strategies might be used to compensate for lower shifting (in academic thinking) and lower processing speed (in simple cognitive strategy use and contacts with others). With increasing age, the number of contacts with peers or teachers decreases. This latter finding might be of relevance during the pandemic since contacts with others is importance during lockdown.

Measuring Perseverance and Passion in Distance Education Students: Psychometric Properties of the Grit Questionnaire and Associations With Academic Performance.

With modern technological advances, distance education has become an increasingly important education delivery medium for, for example, the higher education provided by open universities. Among predictive factors of successful learning in distance education, the effects of non-cognitive skills are less explored. Grit, the dispositional tendency to sustain trait-level passion and long-term goals, has raised much research interest and gained importance for predicting academic achievement. The Grit Questionnaire, measuring Perseverance of Effort and Consistency of Interests, has been shown to be a reliable instrument in traditional university student populations. However, the measurement and predictive validity of this questionnaire is still unknown for adult distance education university students who differ from traditional students in various ways (e.g., having a wider range of student ages). Based on a sample of 2,027 students from a distance education university, this study assessed the psychometric properties of the two-factor structure grit measured by the Grit Questionnaire. The findings suggest that the short form of the Grit Questionnaire is a potentially useful assessment tool for measuring the grit construct for distance learning higher education and that the Consistency of Interests factor is especially relevant to consider the improvement of learning performance for distance education in terms of courses credit and exam attempts. The measurement precision of the Perseverance of Effort factor, however, should be improved in future research to provide higher measurement accuracy and broader item coverage.

DNA methylation as a mediator of the association between prenatal adversity and risk factors for metabolic disease in adulthood.

Although it is assumed that epigenetic mechanisms, such as changes in DNA methylation (DNAm), underlie the relationship between adverse intrauterine conditions and adult metabolic health, evidence from human studies remains scarce. Therefore, we evaluated whether DNAm in whole blood mediated the association between prenatal famine exposure and metabolic health in 422 individuals exposed to famine in utero and 463 (sibling) controls. We implemented a two-step analysis, namely, a genome-wide exploration across 342,596 cytosine-phosphate-guanine dinucleotides (CpGs) for potential mediators of the association between prenatal famine exposure and adult body mass index (BMI), serum triglycerides (TG), or glucose concentrations, which was followed by formal mediation analysis. DNAm mediated the association of prenatal famine exposure with adult BMI and TG but not with glucose. DNAm at PIM3 (cg09349128), a gene involved in energy metabolism, mediated 13.4% [95% confidence interval (CI), 5 to 28%] of the association between famine exposure and BMI. DNAm at six CpGs, including TXNIP (cg19693031), influencing ß cell function, and ABCG1 (cg07397296), affecting lipid metabolism, together mediated 80% (95% CI, 38.5 to 100%) of the association between famine exposure and TG. Analyses restricted to those exposed to famine during early gestation identified additional CpGs mediating the relationship with TG near PFKFB3 (glycolysis) and METTL8 (adipogenesis). DNAm at the CpGs involved was associated with gene expression in an external data set and correlated with DNAm levels in fat depots in additional postmortem data. Our data are consistent with the hypothesis that epigenetic mechanisms mediate the influence of transient adverse environmental factors in early life on long-term metabolic health. The specific mechanism awaits elucidation.

Adolescent self-control predicts midlife hallucinatory experiences: 40-year follow-up of a national birth cohort.

BACKGROUND: Associations between self-control in adolescence and adult mental health are unclear in the general population; to our knowledge, no study has investigated self-control in relation to psychotic-like symptoms. AIMS: To investigate the relationship between adolescent self-control and the midlife mental health outcomes of anxiety and depression symptoms and psychotic-like experiences (PLEs), controlling for the effect of adolescent conduct and emotional problems and for parental occupational social class and childhood cognition. METHODS: A population-based sample, the MRC National Survey of Health and Development (the British 1946 birth cohort) was contacted 23 times between ages 6 weeks and 53 years. Teachers completed rating scales to assess emotional adjustment and behaviors, from which factors measuring self-control, behavioral, and emotional problems were extracted. At age 53 years, PLEs were self-reported by 2918 participants using 4 items from the Psychosis Screening Questionnaire; symptoms of anxiety and depression were assessed using the scaled version of the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-28). RESULTS: After adjustment for the above covariates, poor adolescent self-control was associated with the presence of PLEs in adulthood, specifically hallucinatory experiences at age 53 years, even after adjustment for GHQ-28 scores. CONCLUSIONS: Lower self-control in adolescence is a risk factor for hallucinatory experiences in adulthood.