Preparing Disadvantaged Students for Success in College: Lessons Learned From the Preparation Initiative

How Do People Come to Judge What Is "Reasonable"? Effects of Legal and Sociological Systems on Human Psychology

How do people decide what is reasonable? People often have to make those judgments, judgments that can influence tremendously consequential decisions-such as whether to indict someone in a legal proceeding. In this article, we take a situated cognition lens to review and integrate findings from social psychology, judgment and decision-making, communication, law, and sociology to generate a new framework for conceptualizing judgments of reasonableness and their implications for how people make decisions, particularly in the context of the legal system. We theorize that differences in structural and social contexts create information asymmetries that shape people's priors about what is and is not reasonable and how they update their priors in the face of new information. We use the legal system as a context for exploring the implications of the framework for both individual and collective decision-making and for considering the practical implications of the framework for inequities in law and social policy.

Unstandard Deviation: The Untapped Value of Positive Deviance for Reducing Inequalities

Behavioral science is increasingly used in public policy to understand and address various manifestations of inequalities. Yet evidence from effective population-level interventions is limited. One framework, known as positive deviance, emphasizes individuals from disadvantaged circumstances who have significantly better outcomes than are typical for their group. Studying their behaviors and outcomes helps to understand what might explain their overall success. These insights could also be used to help others from these circumstances experience positive outcomes. Because positive deviance has been markedly understudied, we present a framework for doing so specifically within behavioral science for public policies aimed at reducing inequalities. Using examples from real-world and experimental insights on choices and outcomes of positive deviants, we encourage further study of their choices and trajectories over time to produce valuable insights. We propose that leveraging those findings would inform public policy by introducing interventions that are more ecologically sound and population-relevant and thus have a better chance at benefiting those who start off under adverse circumstances.

Academic Trajectories of College Students with and without ADHD: Predictors of Four-Year Outcomes

Objective: Completing a college degree is associated with success in employment, financial earnings, and life satisfaction. Mental health difficulties, including attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), can compromise degree completion.Method: We examined 4-year academic performance trajectories of 201 college students with ADHD (97 receiving medication [ADHD-Med], 104 not receiving medication [ADHD-NoMed]) relative to 205 non-ADHD Comparison students. Demographic (e.g., sex, race/ethnicity), psychological (e.g., self-reported depression and anxiety symptoms), and service-related (e.g., receipt of academic support) variables were included as predictors of intercept (i.e., Year 1 performance) and slope (yearly change) of semester GPA, progress toward graduation, and self-reported study skill strategies.Results: College students with ADHD obtained significantly lower GPAs (Hedge's g = -0.46 and -0.63) and reported less frequent use of study skills strategies (Hedge's g range from -1.00 to -2.28) than Comparison students. Significantly more Comparison students (59.1%) persisted through eight semesters relative to ADHD-NoMed students (49%). Multiple variables predicted outcomes with parent education, fewer depressive symptoms, better executive functioning, and receipt of high school Section 504 accommodations and college academic support services among the strongest predictors.Conclusions: Findings suggest support services for students with ADHD should begin prior to college matriculation and focus on improving executive functioning skills and depressive symptoms to increase chances of academic success.

When the Going Gets Tough, How Do We Perceive the Future?

People struggle to stay motivated to work toward difficult goals. Sometimes the feeling of difficulty signals that the goal is important and worth pursuing; other times, it signals that the goal is impossible and should be abandoned. In this article, we argue that how difficulty is experienced depends on how we perceive and experience the timing of difficult events. We synthesize research from across the social and behavioral sciences and propose a new, integrated model to explain how components of time perception interact with interpretations of experienced difficulty to influence motivation and goal-directed behavior. Although these constructs have been studied separately in previous research, we suggest that these factors are inseparable and that an integrated model will help us to better understand motivation and predict behavior. We conclude with new empirical questions to guide future research and by discussing the implications of this research for both theory and intervention practice.

Do you need a roadmap or can someone give you directions: When school-focused possible identities change so do academic trajectories

INTRODUCTION

Despite the assumed importance of school-focused possible identities for academic motivation and outcomes, interventions rarely assess the effect of intervention on possible identities. This may be due to difficulty coding open-ended text at scale but leaves open a number of questions: 1) how do school-focused possible identities change over the course of the school year, 2) whether these changes are associated with changes in school outcomes, and 3) whether a machine coding approach is viable.

METHODS

In Study 1 (n = 247 Chicago 8th-graders) we assess fall-to-spring change in school-focused possible identities. We test whether change in school-focused possible identities predicts 8th-grade academic outcomes. We include robustness checks. Then we examine school context effects. In Study 2 (n = 1006 Chicago 8th-graders) we address the problem of coding at scale, using a separate data set to train a machine-learning algorithm.

RESULTS

On average, school-focused possible identities decline over the school year. But nearly a third of students have increasing school-focused possible identity scores. Increase is associated with improved grades. School context influences whether linked strategies matter. Our machine-learning algorithm accurately classifies school-focused possible identities in our original sample and this school-focused classification reliably predicts academic trajectories.

CONCLUSIONS

Change in school-focused possible identities is normative over the course of the school year, interventions should take this into account. On average, students have fewer school-focused possible identities by spring. This decline is associated with declining academic trajectories. However, when school-focused possible identities increase, so do grades. Whether strategies matter is context dependent.