Interpretation of cognitive change has been complicated because different influences on change are not easily distinguished. In this study, longitudinal cognitive change was decomposed into a component related to the length of the interval between test occasions (i.e., time-dependent change) and a component unrelated to the test-retest interval (i.e., time-independent change). Influences of age...

OBJECTIVES Personality traits predict numerous health outcomes, but previous studies have rarely used personality change to predict health. METHODS The current investigation utilized a large national sample of 3,990 participants from the Midlife in the U.S. study (MIDUS) to examine if both personality trait level and personality change longitudinally predict 3 different health outcomes (i.e.,...

In this report we analyzed genetically informative data to investigate within-person change and between-person differences in late-life cognitive abilities as a function of childhood social class. We used data from nine testing occasions spanning 28 y in the Swedish Adoption/Twin Study of Aging and parental social class based on the Swedish socioeconomic index. Cognitive ability included a gene...

Developmental change in children's number-line estimation has been thought to reveal a categorical logarithmic-to-linear shift in mental representations of number. Some have claimed that the broad and rapid change in estimation patterns that occurs with corrective feedback provides strong evidence for this shift. However, quantitative models of proportion judgment may provide a better account o...

In this paper it is argued that existing accounts of mechanisms of cognitive change in joint nroblem solvine: are inadequate for several reasons. In particular explanations based on sociocognitive conflict do not tell us how the resolution of inter individual conflicts leads to cognitive change. It is argued that a more effective approach is to analyse the dialogue processes involved. A model i...

Lay conceptions of personality change and continuity were examined in a sample of 112 undergraduates. Participants rated their personal change over 5 years (past or future), the change they perceived to be normative over 10-year age spans between 15 and 65, their beliefs about whether personality is fixed or malleable (‘‘lay theories’’) and their beliefs about the causes of personality change a...

Prior experience with a cognitive task is often associated with higher performance on a second assessment, and these experience effects can complicate the interpretation of cognitive change. The current study was designed to investigate experience effects by obtaining measures of cognitive performance separated by days and by years. The analyses were based on data from 2017 adults with two long...

Two major challenges facing researchers interested in cognitive change are that measures of change are often not very reliable, and they may reflect effects of prior test experience in addition to the factors of primary interest. One approach to dealing with these problems is to obtain multiple measures of change on parallel versions of the same tests in a measurement burst design. A total of 7...