How Needs-Supplies Fit Processes With Teachers, Peers, and Parents Relate to Youth Outcomes: A Theoretical and Methodological Extension of Self-Determination Theory.

According to self-determination theory (SDT), relationships that support the needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness are essential to youth development. It is yet unknown whether adolescents differ in what constitutes "optimal" supplies of support. This research proposes methodological extensions to analyze how the degree of fit or misfit between needs versus supplies in support (i.e., from teachers, parents, and peers) relates to engagement in class, academic achievement, and well-being. Data were collected on 389 adolescents (M(age) = 14.3, SD(age) = 2.1, 58% female, low to high SES). Extending SDT's contention that "the more supplies the better", results suggest that the impact of supplies actually depends on the level of needs, and that commensurate (for parents) or surplus supplies (for teachers, peers) are most optimal. Therefore, while some youth require strongly supportive relationships to experience optimal development, others require much lower support, and may even suffer from higher support.

Revisiting the Effects of Gender Diversity in Small Groups on Divergent Thinking: A Large-Scale Study Using Synchronous Electronic Brainstorming.

Numerous studies have examined the effects of gender diversity in groups on creative performance, and no clear effect has been identified. Findings depend on situational cues making gender diversity more or less salient in groups. A large-scale study on two cohorts (N = 2,261) was conducted among business students to examine the impact of the gender diversity in small groups on divergent thinking in an idea-generation task performed by synchronous electronic brainstorming. Participants were automatically randomized in three- or four-member groups to generate ideas during 10 min on a gendered or neutral task. Then, five categories of groups where the proportion of men/women in groups varied from three/four men to three/four women were compared to examine creative performance on three divergent thinking measures (fluency, flexibility, and originality). A Multivariate Generalized Linear Mixed Model (mGLMM) showed greater fluency in all-women groups than in other groups (except mixed-gender groups composed of two men and two women), and more specifically "solo" groups composed of a single woman/man among a majority of men/women. For flexibility and originality, the superiority of all-women groups was found only in comparison to "solo" groups composed of a single woman. As gender differences are more salient in "solo" groups than in other groups faultlines may appear in groups, leading to a deleterious impact on creative performance.

Working memory in children predicts performance on a gambling task.

The authors investigated whether working memory (WM) plays a significant role in the development of decision making in children, operationalized by the Children's Gambling Task (CGT). A total of 105 children aged 6-7, 8-9, and 10-11 years old carried out the CGT. Children aged 6-7 years old were found to have a lower performance than older children, which shows that the CGT is sensitive to participant's age. The hypothesis that WM plays a significant role in decision making was then tested following two approaches: (a) an experimental approach, comparing between groups the performance on the CGT in a control condition (the CGT only was administered) to that in a double task condition (participants had to carry out a recall task in addition to the CGT); (b) an interindividual approach, probing the relationship between CGT performance and performance on tasks measuring WM efficiency. The between-groups approach evidenced a better performance in the control group. Moreover, the interindividual approach showed that the higher the participants' WM efficiency was, the higher their performance in the CGT was. Taken together, these two approaches yield converging results that support the hypothesis that WM plays a significant role in decision making in children.

[Age-prospective memory-paradox: explanatory hypotheses]. / L'effet paradoxal du vieillissement sur la mémoire prospective: hypothèses explicatives.

Prospective memory is a complex cognitive function requiring to remember a planned action. For example, this function is particularly important for elderly people to remember taking medication at the appropriate time. The comparison of the performance of old and young peoples on different prospective memory tasks led to two contradictory results, a configuration that has been dubbed "age-prospective memory-paradox". The first set of results of the age-prospective memory-paradox configuration is in keeping with the effects of aging on cognitive functioning, older peoples generally performing less well than younger peoples on laboratory prospective memory tasks. The second set of results is at odds with the first one, as older peoples generally perform better than younger peoples on naturalistic prospective memory tasks. The aim of the present paper is to expose the main explanatory hypotheses of the age related deficit on laboratory prospective memory tasks in one hand and on the age related benefit on naturalistic prospective memory tasks on the other hand. Concerning laboratory prospective memory tasks, the main hypothesis is that the detrimental effect of age would be principally due to negative influence of age on executive control processes and retrospective memory processes involved in this kind of tasks. With respect to naturalistic prospective memory tasks, a higher motivational level and the fact that older people have more frequently recourse to external memory aids and to compensation strategies could explain the better results of older people.

Sex Differences in Language Across Early Childhood: Family Socioeconomic Status does not Impact Boys and Girls Equally.

Child sex and family socioeconomic status (SES) have been repeatedly identified as a source of inter-individual variation in language development; yet their interactions have rarely been explored. While sex differences are the focus of a renewed interest concerning emerging language skills, data remain scarce and are not consistent across preschool years. The questions of whether family SES impacts boys and girls equally, as well as of the consistency of these differences throughout early childhood, remain open. We evaluated consistency of sex differences across SES and age by focusing on how children (N = 262), from 2;6 to 6;4 years old, from two contrasting social backgrounds, acquire a frequent phonological alternation in French - the liaison. By using a picture naming task eliciting the production of obligatory liaisons, we found evidence of sex differences over the preschool years in low-SES children, but not between high-SES boys and girls whose performances were very similar. Low-SES boys' performances were the poorest whereas low-SES girls' performances were intermediate, that is, lower than those of high-SES children of both sexes but higher than those of low-SES boys. Although all children's mastery of obligatory liaisons progressed with age, our findings showed a significant impeding effect of low-SES, especially for boys.