Students’ Value Orientations,Intuitive Decision Making,and Motivational Interference,and Their Relations to Regret

Students’ learning activities frequently compete with their leisure options, leading to regret after decisions to study. Using a sample of 233 German and 194 Australian undergraduate students, the authors explored possible determinants of the personality construct regret. They investigated whether the level to which students rely on intuition in decision making is negatively connected to the tendency to regret a decision and whether the degree to which during studying students are distracted by leisure incentives (motivational interference) is positively related to regret. Students’ achievement and well-being value orientations are expected to be linked to intuition and interference. In both samples, interference was positively related to regret whereas intuition was negatively related to regret only in the German sample. The authors did not find the expected link between intuition and interference. In both samples, value orientations were related, as expected, to intuition and interference. Regret could possibly be reduced if motivational interference is avoided.     

A School District Perspective on Appropriate Test-Preparation Practices: A Reaction to Popham's Proposals

Recent discussions of the appropriateness of various test-preparation activities have focused on the responsibilities of the teacher. Do those who make and mandate tests used in high-stakes situations bear any responsibility for the validity of the scores? Is it possible to construct a comprehensive set of guidelines to protect the validity of test scores?     

Value orientations and motivational interference in school-leisure conflict: The case of Vietnam

The experience of motivational interference during studying and leisure in a school-leisure conflict and its relationship to pupils' value orientations were investigated in a self-report study of Vietnamese pupils (N = 346, mean age = 15 years). The results were compared with a combined sample consisting of pupils from nine other countries (N = 2155). From a cross-cultural perspective, the mean values of the variables show that Vietnamese pupils differ with regard to their values and motivational interference from pupils in other countries. Within the Vietnamese sample, modern value orientation was positively related to decision for a studying activity in a school-leisure conflict and to experience of motivational interference during a leisure activity and negatively related to interference during studying. For post-modern value orientation, the relationships were mostly reversed. Despite differences between sample means, the consistency in the relationships between the variables across the samples indicates that the pattern of relationships can be generalized.     

Cognitive ability and personality variables as predictors of school grades and test scores in adolescents

The predictive power of cognitive ability and self-control strength for self-reported grades and an achievement test were studied. It was expected that the variables use of time structure, academic procrastination, and motivational interference during learning further aid in predicting students’ achievement because they are operative in situations of school-leisure conflict. A sample of 697 eighth-graders was tested twice within the interval of a single school year (about eight months). Cognitive ability and self-control explained substantial variance of grade changes. Procrastination displayed a further portion of the variance. Personality variables were better predictors of grades, while cognitive ability showed higher variance with the achievement test. Variables tapping aspects of self-control strength have been interpreted as key determinants of learning outcomes. The findings suggest that it might be useful to identify students who are at risk, allowing these students to train their ability to shield studying from leisure distractions.     

The linguistic complexity of adult and child contextualized and decontextualized talk

The association between decontextualized talk (DT; i.e., talk extending beyond immediate context) and child language outcomes is well-attested but not well-understood. This study tested the hypothesis that DT is more linguistically complex than contextualized talk (CT). Thirty-eight Norwegian children (M_age = 5.5 years; 25 girls; 30 Norwegian-speaking monolinguals and eight multilinguals) and their teachers were videotaped during picture book reading, story card conversations and toy play (collected 2010–2011 and 2017). Results show that DT was more complex than CT among children and teachers. Both types of talk were more complex during book reading and story conversations than during play. The conversational context should be accounted for when theorizing about the role of DT in language development.