Future students are confronted with a complex world that demands the ability to solve problems in unstructured, undefined, and unfamiliar situations. The aim of the present study was to investigate the development of problem-solving skills through the implementation of Problem-Based Learning (PBL). While previous research has primarily focused on…

Purpose: Two types of orthographic knowledge were examined: i) knowledge of permissible letter combinations (general orthographic knowledge) and ii) knowledge of whole words (word-specific orthographic knowledge), to gain further insights into the relationship of general and word-specific orthographic knowledge with literacy skills. Method:…

The worst performance rule (WPR) describes the phenomenon that individuals' slowest responses in a task are often more predictive of their intelligence than their fastest or average responses. To explain this phenomenon, it was previously suggested that occasional lapses of attention during task completion might be associated with particularly…

Notwithstanding their relevance to children's cognitive development, home literacy activities of preschool children with migration backgrounds have only been partly explored. Therefore, the current understanding of this topic, particularly in a German setting remains incomplete. This study aimed to evaluate the differences between preschool…

The influence of the epistemological beliefs of parents on the development of comprehensive scientific reasoning abilities was investigated in a five-wave longitudinal study from kindergarten to elementary school. The 161 German 5-10-year-olds (89 girls, 72 boys) were assessed yearly on their scientific reasoning abilities using comprehensive…

Fluid intelligence and conscientiousness are important predictors of students' academic performance and competence gains. Although their individual contributions have been widely acknowledged, less is known about their potential interplay. Do students profit disproportionately from being both smart and conscientious? We addressed this question…

In recent studies, test-score increases have been shown in rule-based intelligence test tasks, such as number series, after watching a corresponding video tutorial. An open question remains regarding the mechanisms involved. Specifically, taking notes to describe the relations between numbers might be linked to test scores, and is hypothesized to…

Figural matrices tasks are one of the most prominent item formats used in intelligence tests, and their relevance for the assessment of cognitive abilities is unquestionable. However, despite endeavors of the open science movement to make scientific research accessible on all levels, there is a lack of royalty-free figural matrices tests. The Open…

Children in early childhood education and care (ECEC) spend a considerable amount of time interacting with their peers. However, open questions remain on whether and how children influence their peers' language development. The present study examined effects of peers' German receptive vocabulary (n = 1,871) on individual children's (n = 431)…

First-order theory of mind (ToM) development has shown to conform to a Guttman scale, with desire reasoning developing before belief reasoning. There have been attempts to test for internal consistency and scalability in advanced ToM, but not over a broad age range and only with a limited set of tasks. This 2-year longitudinal study (N = 155;…

The relation between nonword repetition and vocabulary has been the focus of a theoretical controversy for several decades. The point of contention is whether the ability underlying nonword repetition drives vocabulary growth or vice versa. The present study examines longitudinal interrelations between nonword repetition and vocabulary from age 3…

Purpose: This study examined whether monolingual German-speaking preschool children with developmental language disorder (DLD) were facilitated by the presence of case-marking cues in their interpretation of German subject and object "welcher" ("which")-questions, as reported for their typically developing peers. We also…

Artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics are major breakthrough technologies that are transforming the economy and society. The OECD's Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Skills (AIFS) project is developing a programme to assess the capabilities of AI and robotics, and their impact on education and work. This volume reports on the first…

Describing events may be challenging for any child, but children who use communication aids may face unique linguistic, pragmatic, and strategic challenges in conveying information with the communication means they have available. This study explores strategies used by young, aided communicators when describing the content of a video unknown to…

In this study, we investigated developmental aspects of eye movements during reading of three languages (English, German, and Finnish) that vary widely in their orthographic complexity and predictability. Grapheme-phoneme correspondence rules are rather complex in English and German but relatively simple in Finnish. Despite their differences in…