Researchers have become interested in the school climate experiences of Black youth given findings of less positive evaluations of school climate in comparison to their other-race peers. School support for cultural pluralism, also referred to as school support for cultural diversity, has been regarded as one aspect of school climate, but is sometimes distinct from Black youth's ratings of general perceptions of school climate. This project sought to understand the relationship between Black students' perceptions of school support for cultural pluralism and perceptions of school climate. Structural equation modeling techniques were used to determine whether previous perceptions of school support for cultural pluralism predicted later perceptions of school climate in a sample of 336 Black adolescents (Mage = 13.74 years). Furthermore, racial identity was explored as the mechanism through which school support for cultural pluralism impacted school climate appraisals, and differences between Black boys (N = 151) and Black girls (N = 185) were tested. Results confirmed that Black youth who rated their school as being supportive of culturally pluralism had more positive ratings of school climate during the following school year after controlling for the previous year's school climate ratings. However, the mediating role of racial identity differed for Black boys and Black girls, underscoring the need for intersectional research for Black youth and the importance of racial identity. We conclude with a discussion regarding the importance of racial/ethnic identity and pluralism within the school context, as well as, the unique role of school psychologists as preventionists and advocates of change within schools. © 2020 Society for the Study of School Psychology

Cognitive and neuroimaging evidence suggests that episodic and semantic memory-memory for autobiographical events and conceptual knowledge, respectively-support different aspects of creative thinking, with a growing number of studies reporting activation of brain regions within the default network during performance on creative thinking tasks. The present research sought to dissociate neural contributions of these memory processes by inducing episodic or semantic retrieval orientations prior to performance on a divergent thinking task during fMRI. We conducted a representational similarity analysis (RSA) to identify multivoxel patterns of neural activity that were similar across induction (episodic and semantic) and idea generation. At the behavioral level, we found that semantic induction was associated with increased idea originality, assessed via computational estimates of semantic distance between concepts. RSA revealed that multivoxel patterns during semantic induction and subsequent idea generation were more similar (compared to episodic induction) within the left angular gyrus (AG), posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), and left anterior inferior parietal lobe (IPL). Conversely, activity patterns during episodic induction and subsequent generation were more similar within left parahippocampal gyrus and right anterior IPL. Together, the findings point to dissociable contributions of episodic and semantic memory processes to creative cognition and suggest that distinct regions within the default network support specific memory-related processes during divergent thinking.

A central challenge for creativity research-as for all areas of experimental psychology and cognitive neuroscience-is to establish a mapping between constructs and measures (i.e., identifying a set of tasks that best captures a set of creative abilities). A related challenge is to achieve greater consistency in the measures used by different researchers; inconsistent measurement hinders progress toward shared understanding of cognitive and neural components of creativity. New resources for aggregating neuroimaging data, and the emergence of methods for identifying structure in multivariate data, present the potential for new approaches to address these challenges. Identifying meta-analytic structure (i.e., similarity) in neural activity associated with creativity tasks might help identify subsets of these tasks that best reflect the similarity structure of creativity-relevant constructs. Here, we demonstrated initial proof-of-concept for such an approach. To build a model of similarity between creativity-relevant constructs, we first surveyed creativity researchers. Next, we used NeuroSynth meta-analytic software to generate maps of neural activity robustly associated with tasks intended to measure the same set of creativity-relevant constructs. A representational similarity analysis-based approach identified particular constructs-and particular tasks intended to measure those constructs-that positively or negatively impacted the model fit. This approach points the way to identifying optimal sets of tasks to capture elements of creativity (i.e., dimensions of similarity space among creativity constructs), and has long-term potential to meaningfully advance the ontological development of creativity research with the rapid growth of creativity neuroscience. Because it relies on neuroimaging meta-analysis, this approach has more immediate potential to inform longer-established fields for which more extensive sets of neuroimaging data are already available.

The low cost of mobile computing devices, coupled with cheap and elastic cloud-based data storage and computing, along with advances in the fields of artificial intelligence and machine learning, has launched a data revolution in the science of learning. How do we gain knowledge about how people learn from data on hundreds of thousands of students and their teachers collected across extended time frames? This chapter considers this question, starting with a word about the data itself. How to make sense of all these data? The chapter briefly considers some of the key research areas and computational techniques used. The key research areas and computational techniques include: formative assessment; supervised, semisupervised, and unsupervised learning; relationship discovery; sequence modeling; content analysis and natural language processing; and multisensory, multimodal modeling. The chapter finally turns to four case studies from authors' lab to illustrate a broad range of research goals, data, and methods. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)

Although minor misconduct is normative in adolescence, such behavior may be met with punishment in American schools. As part of a punitive disciplinary approach, teachers may give adolescents official infractions for minor misconduct-that is, a minor infraction-presumably to deter future problem behavior. This article investigates three arguments that challenge the wisdom of this assumption and considers the potentially detrimental effects of minor infractions: (a) minor infractions increase, rather than deter, adolescents' defiant behavior; (b) these effects are exacerbated among adolescents who are highly attached to school; and (c) teachers' punishment of minor misconduct may be racially biased, resulting in African American students receiving more minor infractions than White students. To test these hypotheses, 729 adolescents' school disciplinary records were analyzed over 1 academic year. Longitudinal multilevel analyses were conducted to assess (a) if receiving minor infractions predicted later increases in infractions for defiant behavior at the within-student level, (b) whether adolescents' attachment to school moderated this association, and (c) if a disparity existed between African American and White students' average level of minor infractions. Results indicated that minor infractions predicted subsequent rises in defiant behavior, and this link was exacerbated for adolescents who reported initially high levels, but not low levels, of school attachment. Furthermore, African American students received more minor infractions than White students, controlling for a host of risk factors for school misconduct. Findings are discussed in relation to American school discipline policies and African Americans' persistent over representation in school discipline and the criminal justice system.

The growth mindset is the belief that intellectual ability can be developed. This article seeks to answer recent questions about growth mindset, such as: Does a growth mindset predict student outcomes? Do growth mindset interventions work, and work reliably? Are the effect sizes meaningful enough to merit attention? And can teachers successfully instill a growth mindset in students? After exploring the important lessons learned from these questions, the article concludes that large-scale studies, including preregistered replications and studies conducted by third parties (such as international governmental agencies), justify confidence in growth mindset research. Mindset effects, however, are meaningfully heterogeneous across individuals and contexts. The article describes three recent advances that have helped the field to learn from this heterogeneity: standardized measures and interventions, studies designed specifically to identify where growth mindset interventions do not work (and why), and a conceptual framework for anticipating and interpreting moderation effects. The next generation of mindset research can build on these advances, for example by beginning to understand and perhaps change classroom contexts in ways that can make interventions more effective. Throughout, the authors reflect on lessons that can enrich metascientific perspectives on replication and generalization.

Prior nonexperimental studies have been used to conclude that children's reading and mathematics achievement bidirectionally influence each other over time, with strong paths from (a) early reading to later mathematics and (b) early mathematics to later reading. In the most influential study on the topic, the early math-to-later-reading path was reported to be stronger than the early reading-to-later-math path (Duncan et al., 2007). Yet prior estimates may be confounded by stable environmental and personal factors influencing both reading and mathematics achievement. We reexamined the bidirectional relations between reading and mathematics achievement using both traditional models and extensions intended to account for unmeasured confounding. Results based on a large nationally representative sample of children from kindergarten to 3rd grade (N = 9,612) indicated that the estimated effects between reading and mathematics achievement differ substantially after accounting for the confounding effects of stable unmeasured factors. In these models, autoregressive and cross-lagged paths were substantially reduced. The finding that early mathematics predicts later reading more strongly than early reading predicts later math disappears and sometimes reverses, suggesting that larger paths from math to reading than from reading to math in previous related analyses are not causally informative. Stability in early mathematics and reading achievement resulted from substantially overlapping time invariant factors that correlate above.90.

This research examined parents' restriction of children's peer relationships in the United States and China. American and Chinese children (N = 934; M-age = 12.67 years) reported on their parents' peer restriction (e.g., limiting children's time with peers) and their behavioral and psychological adjustment 3 times over a year. Increments in parents' peer restriction predicted decrements in children's adjustment over time to a similar extent in the United States and China. However, decrements in children's adjustment predicted increments in parents' peer restriction over time to a greater extent in the United States (vs. China). Thus, it is possible that culture contributes to the socialization process involving parents' restriction of children's peer relationships but only via child-driven pathways.

To explore the potential contribution of parents' causal talk to preschooler's emerging scientific literacy and related interests, we observed 153 parent-child dyads playing together in a museum and in the lab. As in previous work, the frequency with which parents referenced causal information in their speech predicted the strength of their children's causal stance. In addition, the frequency with which parents invited their children to explain causal phenomena. but not the frequency with which they provided explanations to their children, was related to children's scientific literacy. These associations held even when controlling for children's parent-reported exposure to science in the home, as well as their general cognitive skills. Although causal conclusions are precluded by the correlational design, this research is consistent with the possibility that parents begin shaping their children's scientific engagement and literacy when they are as young as three years of age.

Math and science motivational beliefs are essential in understanding students' science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) achievement and choices in high school and college. Drawing on the Eccles' expectancy-value theory and Arnett's emerging adulthood framework, this study examined the relations among high school students' motivational beliefs in ninth grade and their STEM course taking and grade point average (GPA) throughout high school as well as their STEM major choice in college. In addition, we examined subgroup differences across (a) gender and (b) college generation status by testing mean-level differences as well as whether these relations between math and science motivational beliefs and STEM outcomes varied by gender and college generation status. Using nationally representative data from the High School Longitudinal Study (N = 14,040; M-age = 14; 51% female students), this study found that adolescents' math and science motivational beliefs at the beginning of high school were positively associated with STEM achievement and course taking throughout high school and college major choices 7 years later. The results showed that female and first-generation college students had lower math and science self-concept of ability and were less likely to pursue a STEM major in college. However, in most cases, the relations among indicators did not vary by gender and college generation status. This study provided insights for policymakers and practitioners that gender and college generation gaps in STEM are evident at least by the beginning of high school and carry forward to their STEM college choices.