Franzis Preckel

Trier University · Department of Psychology, Giftedness Research and Education

Investment theory and related theoretical approaches suggest a dynamic interplay between crystallized intelligence, fluid intelligence, and investment traits like need for cognition. Although cross-sectional studies have found positive correlations between these constructs, longitudinal research testing all of their relations over time is scarce. I...

Need for Cognition has been established as a key intellectual investment trait shaping students’ academic development. However, little is yet known about its malleability, particularly in youth. This study investigated stability and change in Need for Cognition in a large longitudinal sample of 3409 adolescents from 166 classes in 27 schools in Fla...

Extensive research has highlighted the importance of Need for Cognition (NFC) in various contexts, but our understanding of its development remains limited. In particular, the current psychological literature is relatively silent regarding the factors influencing NFC development. We aim to address this gap by proposing a developmental model of NFC...

Parents' judgment of their children's cognitive ability is important for providing adequate learning environments. This study examined parents' judgment accuracy with 2346 children ( M = 8.94 years; 48.3% girls) and their parents (1283 mothers, 426 fathers, and 637 parental pairs). The data were collected between September 2012 and February 2014 in...

Zusammenfassung: Normen psychometrischer Verfahren sind eine entscheidende Voraussetzung für den Vergleich und die Interpretation von Testwerten. Die konventionelle Methode der Normierung – die Bildung von Subgruppen zu kontinuierlich verteilten Merkmalen (z. B. Altersnormen) – führt jedoch zu verzerrten Normen, sofern nicht sehr große Stichproben...

Norming of psychological tests is decisive for test score interpretation. However, conventional norming based on subgroups results either in biases or require very large samples to gather precise norms. Continuous norming methods, namely inferential, semi-parametric, and (simplified) parametric norming, propose to solve those issues. This article p...

Previous research revealed that students who are overestimated in their ability by their teachers experience school more positively than underestimated students. In the present study, we compared the socio-emotional experiences of N = 1516 students whose cognitive abilities were overestimated, accurately judged, or underestimated by their teachers....

The level and profile of academic achievements affect students’ development in education and beyond. However, the utility of profile interpretation is a matter of debate and there is limited knowledge on the development of academic profiles. Conversely, for research of cognitive ability profiles, specifically differentiation processes, theories and...

Stability and change in students’ achievement goals (AGs) are of great relevance for educational research and practice. In two separate meta-analyses, we investigated the rank-order stability (93 studies, 569 effect sizes, 54,736 students), as well as the mean-level change (157 studies, 1,170 effect sizes, 81,464 students) in AGs throughout student...

Many intelligence tests measure multiple specific cognitive abilities. Practitioners use these specific ability scores, which encompass both specific ability and general intelligence variance, and the resulting intelligence profiles to make counseling and intervention decisions. In the present study, we investigated the temporal stability of eight...

Understanding and supporting gifted and talented children and adolescents Answers common questions of professionals and trainees Presents the state-of-art of theory, research, and practice Explores the characteristics of gifted students More about the book What is giftedness? How do talents develop? Are gifted people "different"? How can gifted chi...

Balancing quasi-experimental field research for effects of covariates is fundamental for drawing causal inference. Propensity Score Matching deals with this issue but current techniques are restricted to binary treatment variables. Moreover, they provide several solutions without providing a comprehensive framework on choosing the best model. The '...

Cognitive abilities, including general intelligence and domain-specific abilities such as fluid reasoning, comprehension knowledge, working memory capacity, and processing speed, are regarded as some of the most stable psychological traits, yet there exist no large-scale systematic efforts to document the specific patterns by which their rank-order...

While intelligence and motivational variables are well-established predictors of academic achievement, Need for Cognition (NFC), the stable intrinsic motivation to engage in and enjoy challenging intellectual activity, has not yet been considered comprehensively in this field, especially not longitudinally. By applying latent change score modeling,...

Math anxiety and math achievement are reciprocally related, which likely impacts individuals’ agency; their educational and career trajectories in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields; and countries’ economic growth in these areas. Previous meta-analyses on this relationship faced limitations from studies using small, con...

The relation between prior knowledge and learning has been investigated in many studies. However, a recent meta-analysis showed that most of these studies suffered from serious methodological shortcomings, as they failed to account for knowledge growth over time, possible ceiling effects for learners with high prior knowledge, moderating effects of...

This longitudinal study examined gender differences in academic boredom development in high-track German secondary education (N = 1428; 761 identified as male, 667 identified as female; four waves of measurement: T1-T4). Target subject domains were mathematics and German. We estimated linear latent growth curves for three forms of academic boredom,...

Norms of psychometric tests are, with the exception of criterion-referenced tests, a crucial prerequisite for the comparison and interpretation of test results. However, conventional norming methods – building subgroups over continuous variables (e.g., age norms) – leads to biased norms unless very large samples are collected. New continuous normin...

Norming of psychological tests and scales is decisive for the interpretation of test scores. However, conventional norming methods based on subgroups result either in biases or require very large samples to gather precise norms. Continuous norming methods, namely inferential, semi-parametric, and parametric norming, propose to solve those issues. T...

For the assessment of very high cognitive abilities, many assessments exhibit shortcomings such as ceiling effects, which prevent assessing individual differences in this ability range; high measurement error, which reduces the reliability of the assessment; or multiple solution pathways to solve the tasks, which threatens construct validity. Reaso...

Intelligenz, Kreativität und Hochbegabung von Schülerinnen und Schülern sind wertvolle Ressourcen für ihre Persönlichkeits- und Leistungsentwicklung. Ihre Entfaltung ist auf Anregung und Unterstützung angewiesen. Lehrpersonen und die Schule spielen dabei eine wesentliche Rolle. Ein positiver Umgang mit der Heterogenität von Schülerinnen und Schüler...

Self-Control can be defined as the self-initiated effortful process that enables individuals to resist temptation impulses. It is relevant for conducting a healthy and successful life. For university students, Grass et al. found that Need for Cognition as the tendency to engage in and enjoy thinking, and Action Orientation as the flexible recruitme...

https://aera23-aera.ipostersessions.com/default.aspx?s=A3-A1-1F-C9-69-CD-DF-DF-00-F4-EA-7D-1F-CB-AB-DD&guestview=true

The MAGMA-package offers nearest neighbor matching for two to four groups. It also includes the option to match data of a 2x2 Design. In addition, MAGMA includes a framework for evaluating the post-matching balance. This vignette is a tutorial on MAGMA. It demonstrates the main MAGMA function on an included simulated dataset. In total, this vignett...

The MAGMA R-package introduces Many Group Matching. The package is available under https://github.com/JulianUrban/MAGMA. For a tutorial of the package, see https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/yfd7a.

https://aera23-aera.ipostersessions.com/Default.aspx?s=E5-CA-51-7B-47-39-55-30-3C-43-8B-B0-B1-45-51-D4

Relations between variables can take different forms like linearity, piecewise linearity, or nonlinearity. Segmented regression analyses (SRA) are specialized statistical methods that detect breaks in the relationship between variables. They are commonly used in the social sciences for exploratory analyses. However, many relations may not be best d...

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected schooling worldwide. In many places, schools closed for weeks or months, only part of the student body could be educated at any one time, or students were taught online. Previous research discloses the relevance of schooling for the development of cognitive abilities. We therefore compared the intelligence test pe...

Intersectional approaches have become increasingly important for explaining educational inequalities because they help to improve our understanding of how individual experiences are shaped by simultaneous membership in multiple social categories that are associated with interconnected systems of power, privilege, and oppression. For years, there ha...

Psychological tests and questionnaires are routinely used in research and practice. These standardized instruments measure psychological constructs decisive for assessment, placement decisions, and interventions. Usually manuals report within-group norms. For different groups including a specific interval of a norm predictor (e.g., age) inverse nor...

Herausragende Fähigkeiten und Leistungen üben eine besondere Faszination auf uns aus. Geschichten über Kinder im Vorschulalter, die anspruchsvolle mathematische Probleme lösen, oder über Jugendliche, die bereits einen universitären Abschluss oder gar Doktortitel erworben haben, finden immer wieder ihren Weg in die Medien. Woher kommen solche Leistu...

We investigated rank-order continuity and mean-level change in adolescents’ self-esteem, academic self-concept, and social self-concept and tested whether interindividual differences in intraindividual change could be explained by four dimensions of classroom climate (i.e., teachers’ focus on students, learning community, pressure related to social...

Examination of cross-sectional and developmental gender differences in three forms of academic boredom using SMM- and MIMIC-models

Zusammenfassung Leistungsstarke Schülerinnen und Schüler erleben Schule zumeist positiver als leistungsschwächere, während für Schülerinnen und Schüler mit unterschiedlicher intellektueller Begabung die Befundlage nicht eindeutig ist. In dieser Studie wurde das sozio-emotionale Erleben von Schule über die vier Dimensionen Klassenklima, Schuleinstel...

The threshold hypothesis and the necessary-but-not-sufficient hypothesis represent popular views on the relationship between intelligence and creativity. However, most studies investigating these hypotheses used suboptimal or even inappropriate statistical methods, calling into question the robustness of the available evidence. The ability differen...

Descriptive analyses of socially important or theoretically interesting phenomena and trends are a vital component of research in the behavioral, social, economic, and health sciences. Such analyses yield reliable results when using representative individual participant data (IPD) from studies with complex survey designs, including educational larg...

Intelligence is of utmost importance in many areas of life. Measures of intelligence predict adjustment in academic, professional, and clinical settings and provide valid indicators of cognitive development and aging. Thus, measuring intelligence as accurately as possible in all populations is crucial. To do so, we need to know whether the structur...

Intersectional approaches have become increasingly important for explaining educational inequalities because they help to improve our understanding of how individual experiences are shaped by simultaneous membership in multiple social categories that are associated with interconnected systems of power, privilege, or oppression. For years, there has...

Cognitive ability is one major component of students’ academic potential. On average, teachers are quite accurate in judging their students’ cognitive ability, but there is considerable variance between teachers. To explain this, the relevant literature discusses several influencing factors on teacher judgment accuracy. One of those factors concern...

Background and Objectives. Perfectionism is a multidimensional personality trait often viewed as a risk factor for developing test anxiety. A recent meta-analysis showed positive correlations of perfectionism facets with test anxiety dimensions. However, all previous research into the perfectionism-test anxiety relation has been cross-sectional. Th...

Practice is the process through which musicians improve their performance abilities and increase their level of expertise. Deliberate Practice (DP) is a theory of expertise based on the concept that interindividual differences in the level of proficiency in a specific domain can be mostly explained by interindividual differences in the amount of de...

We present a model for talent development in music that resulted from applying a general framework for Talent development in Achievement Domains (i.e., the TAD framework; Preckel et al., 2020) to the domain of music. The talent development model in the musical domain (TAD music model) draws on the existing literature on musical talent development b...

The temporal stability of psychological test scores is one prerequisite for their practical usability. This is especially true for intelligence test scores. In educational contexts, high stakes decisions with long-term consequences, such as placement in special education programs, are often based on intelligence test results. There are four differe...

Zusammenfassung. Diese Studie prüfte die dimensionale Struktur des Linzer Fragebogens zum Schul- und Klassenklima für die 4. – 8. Klassenstufe (LFSK 4 – 8) auf der Ebene des Individual- und Klassenklimas. Die Kovarianzstruktur der Bewertungen des Klassenklimas durch 2 084 Schülerinnen und Schüler, gruppiert in 96 Schulklassen, wurde mittels eines M...

The present study investigates how Need for Cognition (NFC), an individual's tendency to engage in and enjoy thinking, relates to academic achievement in 9th grade students (N = 3.355) attending different school tracks to understand whether school track moderates this relation when controlling for student background variables. Using structural regr...

The present integrative data analysis examined gender differences in achievement, achievement profiles, and achievement motivation in mathematics, reading, and science among 113,864 top-performing adolescent math students (top 5% in their respective countries). To do this, we applied the same analysis protocol to representative individual participa...

Descriptive analyses of educational phenomena are a vital component of educational research. Such analyses yield reliable results when using representative individual participant data (IPD) from educational large-scale assessments (ELSAs). The meta-analytic integration of these results offers unique and novel research opportunities to provide stron...

Ability grouping provides an advanced learning environment for gifted students, possibly buffering them from common long-term increases in academic boredom. We present a 3.5-year longitudinal investigation, spanning four waves of measurement (T1-T4), featuring secondary school students (grades 5 through 8) from five different German schools with fu...

We present a teacher professionalization project for promoting elementary school teachers' diagnostic competencies in recognizing their students' potential in STEM subjects. Teacher professionalization is fostered through the teachers' personal involvement in the development of subject-specific diagnostic materials as well as through continuing tra...

We present a working theory of person-related predictors of talent development in natural science during elementary school. The working theory resulted from the juxtaposition of scientific findings and teachers' expertise. The results showed that both teachers and researchers conceive of talent development in natural science as a complex process in...

Perfectionism is a multidimensional personality trait whose facets differentially relate to indicators of psychological functioning, such as global self-esteem. There has been some theoretical disagreement whether perfectionism affects global self-esteem, or vice versa. This question merits renewed attention due to increasing efforts to prevent the...

We provide a systematic review of findings on the relation between circadian preference and school achievement published after the last comprehensive review in 2015. We further test this relation in a longitudinal study. Our review of 26 studies revealed a positive relation between morningness and students’ school achievement, and a negative relati...

Individuals' general intelligence is highly stable over time and strong empirical evidence supports its validity for diagnostic purposes. Frequently, general intelligence is assessed as a composite of different specific cognitive abilities (e.g., verbal, numerical, figural ability). In previous research, these specific abilities only showed margina...

One important predictor of students' intrinsic motivation and schoolwork engagement is the balance between schoolwork difficulty and student skill level, such that students are adequately challenged. However, the question arises whether this is equally true for all students or whether there are students for whom having adequately challenging school...

Differentiation hypotheses concern changes in the structural organization of cognitive abilities that depend on the level of general intelligence (ability differentiation) or age (developmental differentiation). Part I of this paper presents a review of the literature on ability and developmental differentiation effects in children, revealing the n...

Extending research on the ‘disharmony stereotype’, we examined teachers-in-training’s perceptions of gifted children’s characteristics and their expected teacher-child interactions. Also, we investigated whether adding context information that contrasts the impaired social functioning of gifted students could buffer teachers’ stereotypes. An experi...

The structure of academic self-concept (ASC) is assumed to be multidimensional and hierarchical. This methodological review considers the most central models depicting the structure of ASC: a higher-order factor model, the Marsh/Shavelson model, the nested Marsh/Shavelson model, a bifactor representation based on exploratory structural equation mod...

The present integrative data analysis examined gender differences in achievement, achievement profiles, and achievement motivation in mathematics, reading, and science among 115,481 top-performing adolescent math students (top 5% in their respective countries). To do this, we applied the same analysis protocol to representative individual participa...

Individuals’ general intelligence is highly stable over time and strong empirical evidence supports its validity for diagnostic purposes. Frequently, general intelligence is assessed as a composite of different specific cognitive abilities (e.g., verbal, numerical, figural ability). In previous research, these specific abilities only showed margina...

Zur Unterstützung der Entwicklung leistungsstarker und potenziell besonders leistungsfähiger Schülerinnen und Schüler setzt das LemaS-Teilprojekt 20 LUPE bei den diagnostischen Kompetenzen der Lehrpersonen an. Basis hierfür ist ein Talententwicklungsmodell mit spezifischem Bezug zur Leistungsentwicklung in den MINT-Fächern (Mathematik und Sachunter...

Im Schulkontext fallen Annahmen von Lehrkräften über Hochbegabte oft entsprechend des sogenannten Disharmoniestereotyps aus, d. h. Hochbegabte werden im Leistungsbereich positiver als nicht Hochbegabte bewertet, jedoch gleichzeitig und fälschlicherweise negativer hinsichtlich ihres Verhaltens und ihrer Persönlichkeit. Eine Forschungslücke zeigt sic...

It is well-documented that academic achievement is associated with students’ self-perceptions of their academic abilities, that is, their academic self-concepts. However, low-achieving students may apply self-protective strategies to maintain a favorable academic self concept when evaluating their academic abilities. Consequently, the relation betw...

The incremental validity of specific cognitive abilities beyond general intelligence has been investigated in studies using hierarchical multiple regression analyzes (HMR). In the present study, we investigated whether the incremental validity of specific cognitive abilities (i.e., verbal, figural, and numerical ability) for the explanation of scho...

Ability self-concept (SC) and self-efficacy (SE) are central competence-related self-perceptions that affect students’ success in educational settings. Both constructs show conceptual differences but their empirical differentiation in higher education has not been sufficiently demonstrated. In the present study, we investigated the empirical differ...

There are different views on whether perfectionism is a characteristic of intellectually gifted students. Over the last decades, comparative studies of intellectually gifted and non-gifted students have produced inconsistent results. This heterogeneity in findings might be explained by underpowered studies and the multidimensional nature of perfect...

The incremental validity of specific cognitive abilities beyond general intelligence has been investigated in studies using hierarchical multiple regression analyses (HMR). In the present study, it was investigated whether the incremental validity of specific cognitive abilities on school grades varied as a function of the general ability level, us...

We present two domain-specific talent development models for mathematics and natural science in elementary school. The models were formulated based on the joined expertise of giftedness researchers and teachers. An extensive search of the scientific literature, as well as several teacher workshops in the context of a nation-wide German teacher trai...

We present a five-year project aimed at improving teachers’ skills to detect mathematical and scientific talent in elementary school students. Within the project, teachers from 23 German schools and researchers cooperate to extend teachers’ diagnostic competencies, substantiate their practices scientifically, and to learn from each other’s experien...

Achievement in different domains, such as academics, music, or visual arts, plays a central role in all modern societies. Different psychological models aim to describe and explain achievement and its development in different domains. However, there remains a need for a framework that guides empirical research within and across different domains. W...

Adolescence is important for the development of achievement motivation, including achievement goal pursuit. Longitudinal research is scarce on adolescents' goal development and its implications for academic outcomes. In our research, we first present a systematic review of findings on achievement goals in adolescence. Then we report 2 longitudinal...