Sex Differences in the Performance of 7-12 Year Olds on a Mental Rotation Task and the Relation With Arithmetic Performance.

This study evaluates boy-girl differences in 3D mental rotation in schoolchildren aged 7-12 years and the relation to arithmetic performance. A dedicated new task was developed: The Mental Rotation Task - Children (MRT-C). This task was applied to a large sample of 729 children. At the age of 7- to 9-years, a sex difference was found in the number of correct judgments made on the MRT-C. Boys performed better than girls. A closer look at the distribution of boys and girls in this age group showed that boys were overrepresented in the top performance quartile, whereas girls were overrepresented in the lowest performance quartile. A second finding was that higher mental rotation performance was significantly correlated to better mathematical achievement. This finding was done for boys, but not for girls. This correlation underscores the important role that spatial processing plays in mathematical achievement and has implications for school practice.

Boy-Girl Differences in Pictorial Verbal Learning in Students Aged 8-12 Years and the Influence of Parental Education.

This large-scale cross-sectional study of schoolchildren aged 8-12 years (N = 152) evaluates two factors which potentially determine individual differences in intentional learning: the child's sex and parental education. Intentional learning was assessed with a newly constructed Pictorial Verbal Learning Task (PVLT). This task presents line drawings of concrete objects as to-be-remembered information instead of written or auditory presented words. The PVLT has the advantage that performance is not confounded by individual differences in reading or hearing abilities. Results revealed clear sex differences in performance: Girls outperformed boys. Parental education also contributed to individual differences in performance since children of higher educated parents outperformed children of lower educated parents. The results therefore suggest that both sex and parental education could be potent contributors to individual differences in learning performance at school. The findings more specifically imply that children of less educated parents and boys need additional guidance and support in intentional learning when new information and procedures are presented for the first time.

Teacher-Evaluated Self-Regulation Is Related to School Achievement and Influenced by Parental Education in Schoolchildren Aged 8-12: A Case-Control Study.

There are major inter-individual differences in the school achievements of students aged 8-12. The determinants of these differences are not known. This paper investigates two possible factors: the self-regulation of the student and the educational levels obtained by their parents. The study first investigates whether children with high and low academic achievement differ in their self-regulation. It then evaluates whether there are differences in the self-regulation of children with high and moderate-to-low level of parental education (LPE). The focus was on the self-regulation of students as judged by their teacher. Teacher evaluations were assessed using an observer questionnaire: the Amsterdam Executive Functioning Inventory. Results showed that students with low school achievement had substantially lower teacher-perceived self-regulation than children with high school achievement. Furthermore, teacher-perceived self-regulation was lower for children with moderate-to-low LPE than for children with high LPE. The findings suggest that interventions on the domain of self-regulation skills should be developed and used, particularly in students at risk of poor school achievement.

Teacher Evaluations of Executive Functioning in Schoolchildren Aged 9-12 and the Influence of Age, Sex, Level of Parental Education.

Executive functions (EFs) develop over the period of early childhood and adolescence up until young adulthood. Individual children differ substantially in the pace at which their EFs develop, and characteristics such as sex and the level of parental education (LPE) are thought to contribute to these differences. In the present study, we assessed age-related changes in EFs as perceived and evaluated by teachers and parents as well as the influence of sex and LPE on their evaluations. We used a newly developed observer-report questionnaire, the Amsterdam Executive Function Inventory (AEFI). The AEFI assesses three important components of the executive aspects of daily life behavior in 13 questions: Attention; Self-control and Self-monitoring; and Planning and Initiative taking. Teachers and parents evaluated these aspects of executive functioning in 186 schoolchildren in grades 3-6 (age: 9-12 years). Age effects within grades and differences in social economic status between the four participating schools were controlled. Results showed a significant increase in teacher-perceived EFs from third to fourth grades and from fifth to sixth grades. This development was influenced both by the sex of the child and by the LPE. As perceived by teachers, the component self-control and self-monitoring was higher for girls than for boys, and planning abilities were higher for children from families with a higher LPE. Additional analyses showed that there is a systematic and statistically significant difference between the evaluations of the teachers and that of parents. Parents reported higher scores for planning, whereas teachers reported higher scores for self-control and self-monitoring. Evaluations by parents and teachers were different for girls, but not for boys. These findings are important because they imply that the development of EFs as perceived by parents and teachers is influenced by child-related factors. Second, there are clear differences in evaluations between teachers and parents. The AEFI appears to be a tool that is easily used by parents and teachers and shows potential for monitoring the development of EFs as perceived by significant others during young adolescence.

Establishing normative data for multi-trial memory tests: the multivariate regression-based approach.

OBJECTIVE: Multi-trial memory tests are widely used in research and clinical practice because they allow for assessing different aspects of memory and learning in a single comprehensive test procedure. However, the use of multi-trial memory tests also raises some key data analysis issues. Indeed, the different trial scores are typically all correlated, and this correlation has to be properly accounted for in the statistical analyses. In the present paper, the focus is on the setting where normative data have to be established for multi-trial memory tests. At present, normative data for such tests are typically based on a series of univariate analyses, i.e. a statistical model is fitted for each of the test scores separately. This approach is suboptimal because (1) the correlated nature of the data is not accounted for, (2) multiple testing issues may arise, and (3) the analysis is not parsimonious. METHOD AND RESULTS: Here, a normative approach that is not hampered by these issues is proposed (the so-called multivariate regression-based approach). The methodology is exemplified in a sample of N = 221 Dutch-speaking children (aged between 5.82 and 15.49 years) who were administered Rey's Auditory Verbal Learning Test. An online Appendix that details how the analyses can be conducted in practice (using the R software) is also provided. CONCLUSION: The multivariate normative regression-based approach has some substantial methodological advantages over univariate regression-based methods. In addition, the method allows for testing substantive hypotheses that cannot be addressed in a univariate framework (e.g. trial by covariate interactions can be modeled).