In line with scientific literature, there is a growing interest in building-block play. In fact, through this kind of play, children acquire both the abilities for abstract thought and symbolic representation and an understanding of rules—all of which are fundamental for mathematical understanding. This study explores the relationship between constructive play, mathematical skills, and mental i...

Criminal defendants adjudicated incompetent to stand trial are typically hospitalized for competence restoration in state institutions. Prolonged restoration hospitalizations involve civil rights concerns and increasing financial costs, and there remains interest in determining which individuals are likely to be successfully restored. We retrospectively reviewed hospital records of 455 male def...

The current study examined a new spatial integration (SI) task, based on figural rather than linguistic stimuli, to measure the construct of mental modeling ability. Previous tasks conflated linguistic ability with mental modeling ability by requiring sentence processing, which may have contributed to mixed findings with respect to the relationship between mental model ability and working memor...

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND RATIONALE OF THE STUDY The understanding of statistical variation is a core idea for describing and assessing statistical literacy (Watson & Callingham, 2003; Kuntze, Lindmeier & Reiss, 2008). In these studies, dealing with variation has been in the focus of the development of competency models, which were evaluated successfully showing the one-dimensionality of the u...

Spatial abilities have long been relegated to a secondary status in accounts of human intelligence. Tests of spatial abilities are viewed as measures of practical and mechanical abilities that are useful in predicting success in technical occupations, but not as measures of abstract reasoning abilities (Smith, 1964). This conflicts with the important role afforded to spatial imagery in accounts...

BACKGROUND Although adult congenital heart disease (ACHD) patients encounter unique challenges related to social adaptation and mental health, only minimal research has been conducted on this functioning in Japanese ACHD patients. The aims of this study were to describe aspects of the psychosocial functioning of ACHD patients and to determine the psychosocial factors influencing their mental he...

An adoption/twin design was used to address issues concerning the relationship between education and Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) performance. Data on general cognitive abilities, education, and MMSE from 110 identical twin pairs and 177 fraternal pairs aged 50 through 88 were analyzed using multivariate quantitative genetic methods. Genetic influences account for 32% and 19% of the var...

According to the World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) definition, “Mental health is a state of well-being in which an individual can realize his or her own abilities, interact positively with others, cope with the stressors of life and study, work productively and fruitfully, and contribute to his or her family and community.” In short WHO affirms that “There is no health without mental health.”...

Objective. To explore the associations between sitting time in various domains and mental health for workers and nonworkers and the role of weight status. Design. Cross-sectional analyses were performed for 1064 respondents (47% men, mean age 59 years) from the Doetinchem Cohort Study 2008-2009. Sedentary behavior was measured by self-reported time spent sitting during transport, leisure time, ...