Highlights► The functional meaning of EEG alpha synchronization was investigated. ► An experimental manipulation of internal processing demands was achieved. ► Frontal alpha synchronization is related to top-down processing. ► Alpha desynchronization is related to bottom-up processing. ► Alpha synchronization in creative thinking is attributed to top-down processing.

Empirical approaches to cognitive ability claim that divergent thinking represents a useful estimate for the potential of creative thought. According to associative approaches, the ability to fluently retrieve and combine remote associations was suggested to facilitate creative solutions. Taken together, these approaches suggest a close relationship of associative processes and divergent thinking, which so far, however, has not been properly tested. Therefore, the present study examines the validity of associative abilities with respect to divergent thinking, and also, on a more general level, with respect to creativity and intelligence. Four different word-association tasks were employed to assess associative fluency, associative flexibility, dissociative ability, and the ability of associative combination. The sample comprised 150 students from studies with varying amount of creativity-related demands. Associative abilities were found to explain about half of the variance of divergent thinking ability. Latent variable modeling confirmed the significance of dissociation and associative combination for creativity, but also substantiates the relevance of basic associative retrieval processes for intelligence. It is concluded that associative abilities represent valid elementary cognitive abilities underlying creativity.

Background: Recent studies have suggested substantial fluctuations of cognitive performance in adults both across and within days, but very little is known about such fluctuations in children. Children's sleep behavior might have an important influence on their daily cognitive resources, but so far this has not been investigated in terms of naturally occurring within-person variations in children's everyday lives. Methods: In an ambulatory assessment study, 110 elementary school children (8-11 years old) completed sleep items and working memory tasks on smartphones several times per day in school and at home for 4 weeks. Parents provided general information about the children and their sleep habits. Results: We identified substantial fluctuations in the children's daily cognitive performance, self-reported nightly sleep quality, time in bed, and daytime tiredness. All three facets were predictive of performance fluctuations in children's school and daily life. Sleep quality and time in bed were predictive of performance in the morning, and afternoon performance was related to current tiredness. The children with a lower average performance level showed a higher within-person coupling between morning performance and sleep quality. Conclusions: Our findings contribute important insights regarding a potential source of performance fluctuations in children. The effect of varying cognitive resources should be investigated further because it might impact children's daily social, emotional, and learning-related functioning. Theories about children's cognitive and educational development should consider fluctuations on micro-longitudinal scales (e.g., day-to-day) to identify possible mechanisms behind long-term changes. Keywords: Working memory, sleep, school children, structural equation modeling, longitudinal studies. IntroductionCognitive performance fluctuations are largely known as the phenomenon of having good or bad days or moments. Poor results on tests or shortcomings in the cognitive demands of everyday life are often attributed to such bad days or moments. Furthermore, the experience of having a particularly good or bad night's sleep is common in daily life. Astonishingly, however, empirical research on both of these everyday phenomena is scarce. Therefore, our aim was to relate nightly variations in children's sleep to their cognitive performance the following day to gain knowledge about a potential source of cognitive performance fluctuations in children.Some studies with adult samples suggest that cognitive performance fluctuations can be identified in a number of cognitive tasks and that these fluctuations vary according to age (Nesselroade & Salthouse, 2004;Schmiedek, Lövd en, & Lindenberger, 2013;Sliwinski, Smyth, Hofer, & Stawski, 2006). However, to the best of our knowledge, adolescents are the youngest age group that has been investigated in this area of research (Riediger, Wrzus, Schmiedek, Wagner, & Lindenberger, 2011). Hence, there is a serious lack of research on this issue concerning children. P...

Results point to the possible discrimination of adolescents with a proclivity towards eveningness at school. Possible explanations for the relationship between chronotype and academic achievement are presented. Implications for educational practice are also discussed.

The present study addresses visual attention and processing speed in primary school children (N = 345; 7-8 years of age) who received either music (MC) or natural science training (NC) over a period of 18 months. Dependent variables were collected three times (T1-T3) and included measures for processing speed, visual attention and cognitive music abilities. They were submitted to latent or manifest change models including socioeconomic status and basic cognitive functions as covariates. Groups performed similarly in all dependent tasks at baseline (T1). MC showed significant increases in processing speed as well as in music abilities from T2 to T3 and increases in rhythmic abilities from T1 to T2. Although MC also showed increases in both processing speed and visual attention over time, they were at a small advantage with respect to the former and at a clear disadvantage with respect to the latter measure as compared to NC.

Training studies have shown that cognitive plasticity, that is the potential modifiability of a person's cognitive abilities, is considerable across the lifespan and extends to very old age. Cognitive training can not only result in significant performance improvements on the trained tasks, but also benefit performance on new untrained tasks (transfer). However, even though interventions can be very successful at the group level, individual differences in training gains tend to be large. Why do some individuals benefit more than others? In the present study (N = 168), we investigated transfer of executive control training in children (N = 56, 8-10 years of age), younger adults (N = 56, 18-28 years of age), and older adults (N = 56, 62-77 years of age) in a pretest-trainingposttest design. Results of latent change modeling showed a training-induced reduction of age differences and individual differences across training and transfer tasks in all age groups. Moreover, individuals with lower cognitive abilities at pretest showed larger training and transfer benefits after the training. This effect was significantly higher in the training group compared to an active control group, indicating that it was based on the executive control training and not on non-focal effects (e.g., regression to the mean). These findings reveal a pattern of compensation effects with the largest training-induced improvements in participants who needed them the most.

No abstract

The goals of this study were to explore the deficits in working memory associated with literacy disorders (i.e. developmental disorders of reading and/or spelling) and the developmental trajectories of these working memory deficits. The performance of 28 children with literacy disorders was compared to a non-disabled control group with the same group size at five biannual times of measurement in a three-year-longitudinal study beginning at the end of primary school (9.5 years of age). Storage capacity and central-executive working memory were assessed in phonological and visual-spatial modalities, the latter under static and dynamic conditions. Overall, children with literacy disorders were outperformed by their typical developing peers in all phonological and in dynamic visual-spatial storage and centralexecutive tasks except for the static visual-spatial storage task. Results at single times of measurement revealed that the most consistent deficit was found in the storage capacity of the phonological loop. An additional central-executive impairment is supported by low backward spans. The causes for output deficits in dynamic visual-spatial tasks and good performance under static visual-spatial condition are discussed.