To date, cognitive intervention research has provided mixed but nevertheless promising evidence with respect to the effects of cognitive training on untrained tasks (transfer). However, the mechanisms behind learning, training effects and their predictors are not fully understood. Moreover, individual differences, which may constitute an important factor impacting training outcome, are usually ...

the main purpose of this paper is to investigate the performance of nigerian insurance companies using data envelopment analysis (dea). because of the unavailability of the required data, the study is limited to ten nigerian insurance companies for the period of five years from 2008 to 2012. the input employed were commission expenses and management expenses, while premium and investment income...

One of the most contentious issues among Christian denominations today is focused upon the rights of gays within the church. Historically, Christianity has been opposed to lesbian and gay orientation in both the church and wider society. However, recent social attitudes and legislation has become more liberal regarding homosexuality. This leaves the church as one of the last bastions against th...

Previous research has shown that loneliness has a heritable component and that genes within the serotonin-, dopamine-, and oxytocin systems are related to loneliness in adolescence. In the present study, the relation between the BDNF Val66Met polymorphism and loneliness in adolescent boys and girls was examined in a longitudinal study spanning five annual waves (N = 305). Latent growth curve mo...

We evaluated the statistical power of single-indicator latent growth curve models (LGCMs) to detect correlated change between two variables (covariance of slopes) as a function of sample size, number of longitudinal measurement occasions, and reliability (measurement error variance). Power approximations following the method of Satorra and Saris (1985) were used to evaluate the power to detect ...

A longitudinal study was conducted with 425 preschool children during a one-and-a-half-year period to investigate the developmental trajectory of children’s bullying behavior and prediction peer relationships in this trajectory. The latent growth curve model (LGCM) mixed (GMM) were on Mplus normative development heterogeneity behavior. Results showed that: (1) In general, increased age, two sig...

Latent Growth Curve Models (LGCM) are discussed as a general data-analytic approach to the analysis of change. Conventional, but popular, methods of analyzing change over time, such as the paired t-test, repeated measures ANOVA, or MANOVA, have a tradition, which is quite different from the more recently developed latent growth curve models. While the former originated from the idea of variance...

Parental support and parental depressive feelings are found to be associated with depressive feelings in adolescent boys and girls, but results are inconsistent. In addition, the 5-HTTLPR genotype has been found to interact with environmental stressors in predicting adolescents' depressive feelings, but this has not been examined longitudinally. Therefore, the present study examined the relatio...

Although developmental trajectories of anxiety have begun to be explored, most research has focused on total symptom scores in middle childhood and adolescence. Little is known about the specific symptoms early childhood. This three-wave longitudinal study investigated (1) four (separation anxiety, special fear, social generalized anxiety) during childhood, (2) association between maternal anxi...

Hertzog et al. evaluated the statistical power of linear latent growth curve models (LGCMs) to detect individual differences in change, i.e., variances of latent slopes, as a function of sample size, number of longitudinal measurement occasions, and growth curve reliability. We extend this work by investigating the effect of the number of indicators per measurement occasion on power. We analyti...