Do Educational TV Programs Have Positive Effects on Children's Learning?

Growing up as a child, one may wonder if what they watched on television had any effects on the way they see, think, or feel about certain things. Going a step further, those television programs that one grew up with

 may have actually had some effect on how they learn things. This leads to the question: do educational television programs have positive effects on children's learning? When looking at programs such as Sesame Street and Blues Clues, it seems as though they are geared toward teaching the viewers skills. But, does it work? Do those programs have any educational value or are they providing mock educational fluff to offer up a babysitter to parents of the unknowing child? Perhaps these programs offer up another form of education like learning how to socialize with peers and their families.

There have been many studies regarding children and television. Researchers have studied programs and children trying to find out if these programs are really educational to the viewing audience. Some compare programs and some just look at a certain program to come up with their own conclusion. This paper will look at scholarly literature to help come up with my own conclusion on whether educational television programs really do educate children or not.

I was an avid Sesame Street watcher as a child and I would like to think that I learned a little something from it. My mother would agree. She sure was surprised one day when I started counting in Spanish to her. She had never taught me Spanish. When she asked me where I learned the phrases, I responded with, "From Sesame Street, Mom." I remember the show with its vibrant colors and crazy cartoons very vividly because I would watch the television with awe. Maybe I just amused easily, but maybe there is some depth behind it.

HOW TO TEACH YOUR CHILD GOOD READING HABITS

First designate a reading area. This should be a comfortable and quiet space. If possible, have your child pick it out, so they feel it is their "special" spot.

Next, set a book shelf or book area. The child's special spot can be set up to house a small book collection, if space allows. If "special" spot does not allow for the book collection, try to find a space that can hold your child's book collection. It is important to have a variety of books as an option.
The book collection, can be current library books or owned. If you have both, try to separate them, so library books do not get lost.

Encourage your child to pick several books that interest them and are at their reading level. You can ask your child's teacher what level your child is reading at, or what books may be suggested.

Designate a specific amount of time everyday and specific time frame everyday when your child will read. Example: Kindergarten-2nd grade should be about 15 minutes, 3rd-5th should be 30 minutes and so on. Note some schools have a set time requirements, which should be followed.

Encourage your child to share what they have read to you. You can do this by having them read to you or by having then summarize what they have read when they are done.

PROFILE OF A NURSERY SCHOOL CHILD

At the age of 3 years, the child is able to think logically. Learning is rapid as the child applies previous knowledge to new situations. Language progresses as they learn new names for things, words for actions e.g. painting, grammer e.g. pronouns - you and me, and new concepts e.g. this colour is blue. This is the age of Nursery School and learning through play.

Nursery School children learn co-ordination and control of their movements. They walk and run around obstacles, ride tricycles without bumping into others, climb up and down safely, jump, skip and hop. Physical outdoor play is an important part of learning. It gives fresh air, oxygen and sunshine. It provides space to run and develop co-ordination, balance, strength and stamina. Children learn to share and take turns with equipment. Large muscle movements and fine hand manipulative skills are connected. As their large muscle movements become more controlled so does fine hand manipulation. The only way to learn to use a paintbrush is to try painting. With confidence and practice physical skills progress well.

Three to four year olds learn by doing things. They need time to practice new skills and to perfect them. Using the hands is vital for learning. Building, working with dough and clay, using pencils and paintbrushes, cutting with scissors, exploring the tactile qualities of sand and water, fastening buttons and zips, and making jigsaws are some of the ways nursery school children develop hand eye co-ordination and control.

The children learn through the senses. They need brightly coloured attractive classrooms. They enjoy listening to music, singing and stories. Children need time to stay quiet to listen carefully. Tactile experiences in sand, water and malleable materials help learning. Children love to feel different textures and learn the words to describe them. Taste and smell are senses associated with food. They are part of the enjoyment of food. Nursery provides fun opportunities to try new foods and learn about other cultures.

By this age children talk in sentences and become more competent in speaking and listening. Their vocabulary increases and they learn concepts such as full and empty, up and down, under and over, colour, shape, size, number and letters. Children learn by using words and develop understanding. Learning is through play. Roleplay helps children make sense of the adult world and to explore new ideas. Songs and action rhymes help to reinforce new words and give enjoyment to the whole group. Snack time gives opportunities to develop social skill by sharing food together. Storytime shows children what fun books are. The nursery day is structured into routines that soon become familiar to the children and help them feel safe. 

Going to Nursery School is a milestone. The child learns to socialise with other children and adults, and learn to share and to take turns. Preparation is important so every child feels secure in an unfamiliar place. Visits help and opportunities to meet the staff. Familiar things from the child's home life help to make them feel welcome. Pictures of children with similar skin tones, household objects and outfits from their culture in the roleplay area. Each child should feel welcome and valued. Each child's work should be displayed where everyone can admire their efforts. The most important thing they will learn is good self esteem and social skills to work with others.

The social nursery school child: develops co-ordination, strength, stamina, balance, spatial awareness enjoys outdoor play with other children learns to manipulate objects and use tools e.g. a pencil learns through the senses or sight, sound, touch, smell and taste learns through play learns to share and take turns understands more language and speaks in sentences learns new words and concepts e.g. colour and shape enjoys stories, songs and rhymes feels safer in familiar surroundings enjoys familiar routines needs to feel valued and accepted as a unique individual

SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT THEORY

Social development consists of two interrelated aspects – learning and application. Society discovers better ways to fulfill its aspirations and it develops organizational mechanisms to express that knowledge to achieve its social and economic goals. The process of discovery expands human consciousness. The process of application enhances social organization.

Society develops in response to the contact and interaction between human beings and their material, social and intellectual environment. The incursion of external threats, the pressure of physical and social conditions, the mysteries of physical nature and complexities of human behavior prompt humanity to experiment, create and innovate.

The experience resulting from these contacts leads to learning on three different levels of our existence. At the physical level, it enhances our control over material processes. At the social level, it enhances our capacity for effective interaction between people at greater and greater speeds and distances. At the mental level, it enhances our knowledge.

While the learning process takes place simultaneously on all these planes, there is a natural progression from physical experience to mental understanding. Historically, society has developed by a trial and error process of physical experimentation, not unlike the way children learn through a constant process of physical exploration, testing and even tasting. Physically, this process leads to the acquisition of new physical skills that enable individuals to utilize their energies more efficiently and effectively. Socially, it leads to the learning and mastery of organizational skills, vital attitudes, systems and institutions that enable people to manage their interactions with other people and other societies more effectively. Mentally, it leads to organization of facts as information and interpretation of information as thought. 

The outcome of this learning process is the organization of physical skills, social systems, and information, which are then utilized to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of human activities. It is a cyclical process in which people are continuously learning from past experiences and then applying that learning in new activities.

This learning process culminates in a higher level of mental effort to extract the essence and common principles or ideas from society’s organized physical experiences, social interactions and accumulated information and to synthesize them as conceptual knowledge. This abstract conceptual knowledge has the greatest capacity for generalization and application in other fields, times and places. The conceptual mind is the highest, most conscious human faculty. Conceptual knowledge is the organization of ideas by the power of mind. That conceptual knowledge becomes most powerful when it is organized into a system. Theory is a systematic organization of knowledge.

A comprehensive theory of social development would provide a conceptual framework for discovering the underlying principles common to the development process in different fields of activity, countries and periods. It would also provide a framework for understanding the relationships between the accumulated knowledge generated by many different disciplines.  If pursued to its logical conclusions, it would lead to not just a theory of social development, but a unifying theory of knowledge—which does not yet exist in any field of science or art.

Search for a social operating system

Rapid advancement in computer technology and application has primarily been the result of dramatic progress in two parallel but interrelated fields – development of the processing capacity of the silicon chip and development of more advanced operating systems that enable users to utilize the chip’s greater computing power. Chip development increases the potential power of the computer. Development of more powerful, intuitive and easier to use operating systems increases the practical power of the technology.

As a parallel, advances in scientific and technical knowledge have vastly increased the potential productivity and developmental achievements of society. But full utilization of this potential requires the capacity to consciously direct and accelerate social development processes. The discovery of methods to genetically engineer improved varieties of food crops or to control population growth through improved medical devices would have little practical value unless we also possessed the know-how to promote dissemination and adoption of these advanced technologies.

Historically, advances in our understanding of material and biological process have far outstripped advances in our understanding of social processes. As a result, vast social potential has been created, but society has not yet acquired the capacity to fully utilize it for its own development. A theory of development should aim at a knowledge that will enable society more consciously and effectively to utilize its development potentials.

Helping Your Child Have a Great First Day of Preschool

So you've done all the research and picked out the perfect preschool for your child. Last night, you made sure your little one got to bed early so he'd wake up ready to go. A backpack stuffed with supplies like crayons, paper and glue sticks are waiting by the front door. That all-important first-day-of-school outfit is hanging in the closet, and the snack you've made to share with the class is wrapped and ready to go. The first day of preschool has arrived and it's time for your child to begin an educational journey that will last nearly two decades. How can you make this monumental first day a great one?

First, be prepared for some tears. It’s a scenario played out at preschools everywhere. A child, screaming, holding on to mom or dad’s legs for dear life, refusing to even look at the classroom, much less walk into it alone. Relax. It’s normal. Kids this age thrive on familiarity so when they are placed into a new situation, it’s common if they panic a little bit.
Saying goodbye to mom and dad, particularly if it’s the first time out of the house alone, can be difficult for many preschoolers. For some it’s old hat -- they’ve been in daycare for years or just have an incredibly easygoing, go-with-the-flow personality. The key is to make sure you are ready for your child to go to preschool. If you have any doubt or concerns, your child is going to pick up on it immediately. So on the big day, keep a bright smile on your face and stay positive. This will set a great tone for your child and make them realize that going to preschool is something they can and should look forward to.
For some children, they crying doesn’t start until they see other kids doing it. It’s almost like peer pressure -- you can almost see the thoughts forming in your little one’s head. “If he’s crying, then there must be something I should be upset about too.”
In any case, crying children is nothing new to a preschool teacher. Chances are they have a process in place to deal with this very situation. Follow it. In most cases, they’ll encourage you to leave. It will probably be the hardest thing you’ll have to do, but it really does work. Nine out of ten times, the child stops crying within five minutes of the parent leaving. You’ll return to the classroom a few hours later to find your child, happy and content with a pile of artwork they can’t wait to show you. If the preschool teacher can’t get your child to calm down, they’ll be in touch. Trust in their experience and know they have your child’s best interest at heart.

We’re All In This Together
If your child has been in the classroom before, draw on that visit. Point out things they may remember, whether it was an orientation or a trip to meet the teacher. Say things like, “Hey, there are those blocks you played with the last time we were here. Remember how you built that great tower? Maybe you could do that again.”
The great thing about the first day of preschool is that there are a whole bunch of people in the room that are going through the same exact thing as you. If you work together as a team, it becomes that much easier and that much more fun. Point out a child that your preschooler may know from another activity or the neighborhood, or, if she doesn't know anyone, help her to make her first friend. Walk up to the child and her mom and/or dad, point to your child and say, “Hi, this is Isabelle. We really like your Princess shirt. Can we sit here with you?” With a little luck, the other parent will pick up on your idea and introduce her child.
The Leaving is the Hardest Part
There are some definite no-no’s when it comes to saying goodbye that could actually make separating more difficult. Rule number one? Do not remove your child from the classroom. It makes it that much harder to bring him back in. Your child’s teacher will likely be right by your side offering help and assistance.
It might be tempting, but don’t sneak away if your child becomes distracted by another activity. Your child needs to learn that school is a place she goes to without mom or dad and saying goodbye is part of the process.

Don’t ask if it’s OK for you to leave and don’t make promises like, “If you stay here at preschool, I’ll buy you some ice cream when I pick you up.” This can reinforce the behavior if she keeps getting what she wants.
If your child does well on the first day, be prepared, you aren’t out of the woods just yet. Some children waltz right into preschool as happy as can be and everyone is content. But then, out of nowhere, a few weeks into the school year, your child may start to cry when you leave. This too is very common. Basically the novelty of school has worn off and your child realizes that she isn’t with you. Keep bringing her to school and dropping her off as per the teacher’s instructions, this too shall pass.

Healthy Eating Tips for Kids

Whilst it’s best to encourage healthy eating among the whole family, some children may be reluctant to change their eating habits. Here are some tips to get children eating healthily without them even realising…

• Add more veggies to favourite dishes – for example, add finely sliced mushrooms to Bolognese, finely chopped red pepper to tomato sauces and steamed leeks to mashed potato
   
• Serve big portions of veggies they like – sweetcorn, carrots and peas are often popular.
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• Mix together grated carrot and Red Leicester cheese and use to fill sandwiches and jacket potatoes – the colours blend so well they may not notice the carrot.
   
• Buy lower-fat versions of sausages, burgers and oven chips and grill or oven bake them rather than frying. Alternatively, make your own homemade burgers and swap chips for homemade potato wedges – simply cut potatoes in their skins into wedges, brush with a little olive oil and bake in the oven until they are soft in the middle and crispy on the outside.
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• Buy lower-fat versions of crisps and biscuits and opt for the smallest bags available.
   
• Add barley, beans or lentils to soups, stews and other meaty dishes – children won’t notice baked beans in a cottage pie or lentils in a stew.
   
• Buy sugar-free squashes and fizzy drinks – if the kids complain, pour them into empty bottles of the standard variety when they’re not looking.
   
• If children won’t eat wholemeal or granary bread, try high-fibre white bread for sandwiches and toast.
   
• If you can’t get your kids to give up sugary cereals, mix them with lower sugar varieties such as a handful each of Frosties and Cornflakes, or Rice Krispies and Coco Pops
   
• Use whole-wheat pasta in pasta bakes – when mixed with sauce it’s impossible to tell it’s not white
   
• For children who are resistant to brown rice or wholemeal pasta, cook half of each and then mix together.

Kids Intellectual Games

Games can stimulate the mind, awakening creativity and critical thinking. Games for kids can also reinforce new concepts, and entertain in the process. Intellectual games can help kids to become better students, while helping them to develop the ability to think analytically and resourcefully about any life situation.

Logic Puzzles

o Many kids enjoy logic problems. Introduce easier, age-appropriate ones, talking about how to arrive at a solution. Kids may want to try more challenging problems as they grow more comfortable with solving these puzzles. Try the "brain boosters" on DiscoveryEducation.com, which offers games to improve mathematical abilities, reasoning skills, spatial awareness, categorization and comparison abilities, and more.
Scavenger Hunt
o Likewise, scavenger hunt riddles teach kids to think critically. Kids of all ages love participating in scavenger hunts. As a bonus, these games can help them learn to work together as a team.
Geometry Puzzles
o Challenge kids to find geometrical shapes or angles in the world around them. Give them a checklist or bingo card of shapes and angles, and have them walk around a designated area, like a park, school campus or supermarket, to look for them.
Language Charades
o In this version of the classic game, one or two players act out a short skit in a foreign language they're studying. They may read from a card or write the script themselves, depending on their level. The other players try to guess what they are saying.
Board Games
o Many board games reinforce intellectual abilities, as do card games. If the game relies on strategy, not simply chance, it can have intellectual benefits, as ParentingScience.com says. Monopoly, chess, checkers, mancala, Clue, Solitaire, Hearts, and various other strategy games can strengthen a child's mind.

Memory Games
o Memory can be strengthened through games as well. As stated on KidsMemory.com, memory benefits people in every area of study. Go on a nature hike with kids, and when you arrive at a scenic viewpoint, tell them to look at it for a moment, trying to remember every detail. Then, have them close their eyes and answer your questions about the scene. Play online memory games such as those at KidsMemory.com, too, which reinforce the same skills.

Musical Games
o Some kids learn best by touching and doing things hands-on, and music is a great resource for them. Play a variation of "follow the leader" by playing a few notes and then having kids play along. Keep adding more notes until you can play a song. As kids learn about putting notes and chords together to create music, they'll strengthen their memory and recall.

BOOKS FOR LANGUAGE

Language and cognitive development includes word and number recognition, counting and memory, as well as advanced literacy such as reading and writing. Communication and general knowledge is the ability to clearly communicate one’s needs and to understand others, as well as an interest in the outside world.

The books listed below are related to many of these qualities of school readiness. They are meant to help you teach and inspire your children, as you show them the skills they will need to be successful at school and throughout life. Best of all: These books are kid-tested for fun!

To reserve any of these books at the library, just click the book’s title or cover. And remember: These are just a few of the great books available to you. The Milton Library has many, many more!

A wide world of fun and imagination awaits you and your kids.

COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

Is a field of study in neuroscience and psychology focusing on a child's development in terms of information processing, conceptual resources, perceptual skill, language learning, and other aspects of brain development and cognitive psychology. A large portion of research has gone into understanding how a child conceptualizes the world. Jean Piaget was a major force in the founding of this field, forming his "theory of cognitive development". Many of his theoretical claims have since fallen out of favor. However, his description of the general tendencies of cognitive development (e.g., that it moves from being dependent on actions and perception in infancy to understanding of the more observable aspects of reality in childhood to capturing the underlying abstract rules and principles in adolescence is still generally acceptable. Moreover, many of the phenomena that he discovered, such as object permanence in infancy and the conservations in school age children, are real and still attract the interest of researchers. In the recent years alternative models have been advanced, including the neo-Piagetian theories of cognitive development, which aim to integrate Piaget's ideas which stood up well the test of time with more recent theorizing and methods in developmental and cognitive science.
A major controversy in cognitive development has been "nature vs. nurture", or nativism versus empiricism. However, it is now recognized by most experts that this is a false dichotomy: there is overwhelming evidence from biological and behavioral sciences that from the earliest points in development, gene activity interacts with events and experiences in the environment. Therefore the "vs." is false: there is no dichotomy. Another question is how culture and social experience relate to developmental changes in thinking. Another question is phylogenic convergence or homology with non-human animals. Most aspects of learning and cognition are similar in humans and non-human animals. These issues propagate to nearly every aspect of cognitive development.

INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES

Individual Differences
That people differ from each other is obvious. How and why they differ is less clear and is the subject of the study of Individual differences (IDs). Although to study individual differences seems to be to study variance, how are people different, it is also to study central tendency, how well can a person be described in terms of an overall within-person average. Indeed, perhaps the most important question of individual differences is whether people are more similar to themselves over time and across situations than they are to others, and whether the variation within a single person across time and situation is less than the variation between people. A related question is that of similarity, for people differ in their similarities to each other. Questions of whether particular groups (e.g., groupings by sex, culture, age, or ethnicity) are more similar within than between groups are also questions of individual differences.

Personality psychology addresses the questions of shared human nature, dimensions of individual differences and unique patterns of individuals. Research in IDs ranges from analyses of genetic codes to the study of sexual, social, ethnic, and cultural differences and includes research on cognitive abilities, interpersonal styles, and emotional reactivity. Methods range from laboratory experiments to longitudinal field studies and include data reduction techniques such as Factor Analysis and Principal Components Analysis, as well as Structural Modeling and Multi-Level Modeling procedures. Measurement issues of most importance are those of reliability and stability of Individual Differences.

Research in Individual Differences addresses three broad questions: 1) developing an adequate descriptive taxonomy of how people differ; 2) applying differences in one situation to predict differences in other situations; and 3) testing theoretical explanations of the structure and dynamics of individual differences.
Taxonomies of individual differences:
Taxonomic work has focused on categorizing the infinite ways in which individuals differ in terms of a limited number of latent or unobservable constructs. This is a multi-step, cyclical process of intuition, observation, deduction, induction, and verification that has gradually converged on a consensual descriptive organization of broad classes of variables as well as on methods for analyzing them. Most of the measurement and taxonomic techniques used throughout the field have been developed in response to the demand for selection for schooling, training, and business applications.
Test Theory
Consider the case of differences in vocabulary in a particular language (e.g., English). Although it is logically possible to organize people in terms of the specific words they know in English, the more than 2^(500,000) possible response patterns that could be found by quizzing people on each of the more than 500,000 words in English introduces more complexity rather than less. Classical Test Theory (CTT) ignores individual response patterns and estimates an individual's total vocabulary size by measuring performance on small samples of words. Words are seen as random replicates of each other and thus individual differences in total vocabulary size are estimated from observed differences on these smaller samples. The Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient (r) compares the degree of covariance between these samples with the variance within samples. As the number of words sampled increases, the correlation of the individual differences within each sample and with those in the total domain increases accordingly.

Estimates of ability based upon Item Response Theory (IRT) take into account parameters of the words themselves (i.e., the difficulty and discriminability of each word) and estimate a single ability parameter for each individual. Although CTT and IRT estimates are highly correlated, CTT statistics are based on decomposing the sources of variance within and between individuals while IRT statistics focus on the precision of an individual estimate without requiring differences between individuals. CTT estimates of reliability of ability measures are assessed across similar items (internal consistency), across alternate forms, and across different forms of assessment as well as over time (stability). Tests are reliable to the extent that differences within individuals are small compared to those between individuals when generalizing across items, forms, or occasions. CTT reliability thus requires between subject variability. IRT estimates, on the other hand, are concerned with the precision of measurement for a particular person in terms of a metric defined by item difficulty.

The test theory developed to account for sampling differences within domains can be generalized to account for differences between domains. Just as different samples of words will yield somewhat different estimates of vocabulary, different cognitive tasks (e.g., vocabulary and arithmetic performance) will yield different estimates of performance. Using multivariate procedures such as Principal Components Analysis or Factor Analysis, it is possible to decompose the total variation into between domain covariance, within domain covariance, and within domain variance. One of the most replicable observations in the study of individual differences is that almost all tests thought to assess cognitive ability have a general factor (g) that is shared with other tests of ability. That is, although each test has specific variance associated with content (e.g., linguistic, spatial), form of administration (e.g., auditory, visual), or operations involved (e.g., perceptual speed, memory storage, memory retrieval, abstract reasoning), there is general variance that is common to all tests of cognitive ability.
Personality and Ability
Although to some the term personality refers to all aspects of a person's individuality, typical usage divides the field into studies of ability and personality. Tests of ability are viewed as maximal performance measures. Ability is construed as the best one can do on a particular measure in a limited time (speed test) or with unlimited time (power test). Personality measures are estimates of average performance and typically include reports of preferences and estimates of what one normally does and how one perceives oneself and is perceived by others.

The same procedures used to clarify the structure of cognitive abilities have been applied to the question of identifying the domains of personality. Many of the early and current personality inventories use self-descriptive questions (e.g., do you like to go to lively parties; are you sometimes nervous) that are rationally or theoretically relevant to some domain of interest for a particular investigator. Although there is substantial consistency across inventories developed this way, some of this agreement could be due to conceptually overlapping item pools. Other researchers have advocated a lexical approach to the taxonomic problem, following the basic assumption that words in the natural language describe all important individual differences. This shifts the taxonomic question from how are individuals similar and different from each other to how are the words used to describe individuals (e.g., lively, talkative, nervous, anxious) similar and different from each other.

Dimensional analyses of tests developed based on lexical, rational, or theoretical bases suggest that a limited number (between three and seven) of higher order trait domains adequately organize the thousands of words that describe individual differences and the logically infinite way that these words can be combined into self or peer report items. The broadest domains are those of introversion-extraversion and emotional stability-neuroticism, with the domains of agreeableness, conscientiousness and intellectual openness or culture close behind. These domains can be seen as asking the questions that one wants to know about a stranger or a potential mate: are they energetic and dominant (extraverted), emotionally stable (low neurotic), trustworthy (conscientious), loveable (agreeable), and interesting (intelligent and open).

Measures of ability and personality reflect observations aggregated across time and occasion and require inferences about stable latent traits thought to account for the variety of observed behaviors. However there are other individual differences that are readily apparent to outside observers and require little or no inference about latent traits. The most obvious of such variables include sex, age, height, and weight. Differences that require some knowledge and inference are differences in ethnicity and social economic status. These obvious group differences are sometimes analyzed in terms of the more subtle measures of personality and ability or of real life outcomes (e.g, sex differences in neuroticism, mathematics ability, or income).
Predictive Validity

Individual differences are important only to the extent that they make a difference. Does knowing that people differ on a trait X help in predicting the likelihood of their doing behavior Y? For many important outcome variables the answer is a resounding yes. In their review of 85 years of selection in personnel psychology, Frank Schmidt and John Hunter (Psychological Bulletin, 1998, 124, 262-274) show how differences in cognitive ability predict differences in job performance with correlations averaging about .50 for mid complexity jobs. These correlations are moderated by job complexity and are much higher for professional-managerial positions than they are for completely unskilled jobs. In terms of applications to personnel psychology, a superior manager (one standard deviation above the mean ability for managers) produces almost 50% more than an average manager. These relationships diminish as a function of years of experience and degree of training. General mental ability (g) also has substantial predictive powers in predicting non-job related outcomes, such as likelihood of completing college, risk for divorce and even risk for criminality.

The non-cognitive measures of individual differences also predict important real life criteria. Extraversion is highly correlated with total sales in dollars among salespeople. Similarly, impulsivity can be used to predict traffic violations. Conscientiousness, when added to g substantially increases the predictability of job performance. Although the size of the correlation is much lower, conscientiousness measured in adolescence predicts premature mortality over the next fifty years.
Sources of individual differences
The taxonomic and predictive studies of individual differences are descriptive organizations of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that go together and how they relate to other outcomes. But this categorization is descriptive rather than causal and is analogous to grouping rocks in terms of density and hardness rather than atomic or molecular structure. Causal theories of individual differences are being developed but are in a much earlier stage than are the descriptive taxonomies.

Descriptive taxonomies are used to organize the results of studies that examine genetic bases of individual differences. By applying structural modeling techniques to the variances and covariances associated with various family constellations it is possible to decompose phenotypic trait variance into separate sources of genetic and environmental variance. The most common family configurations that are used are comparisons of identical (monozygotic) with fraternal (dizygotic) twins. Additional designs include twins reared together or apart, and biological versus adoptive parents, children and siblings. Conclusions from behavioral genetics for most personality traits tend to be similar: Across different designs, with different samples from different countries, roughly 40-60% of the phenotypic variance seems to be under genetic control with only a very small part of the remaining environmental variance associated with shared family environmental effects. Additional results suggest that genetic sources of individual differences remain important across the lifespan. However, this should not be taken to mean that people do not change as they mature but rather that the paths one takes through life are similar to those taken by genetically similar individuals.

Genes do not code for thoughts, feelings or behavior but rather code for proteins that regulate and modulate biological systems. Although promising work has been done searching for the biological bases of individual differences it is possible to sketch out these bases only in the broadest of terms. Specific neurotransmitters and brain structures can be associated with a broad class of approach behaviors and positive affects while other neurotransmitters and structures can be associated with a similarly broad class of avoidance behaviors and negative affects. Reports relating specific alleles to specific personality traits emphasize that the broad personality traits are most likely under polygenic influence and are moderated by environmental experience.

Subtle differences in neurotransmitter availability and re-uptake vary the sensitivity of individuals to cues about their environment that predict future resource availability and external rewards and punishments. It is the way these cues are detected, atttended to, stored, and integrated with previous experiences that makes each individual unique. Current work on the bases of individual differences is concerned with understanding this delicate interplay of biological propensities with environmental opportunities and constraints as they are ultimately represented in an individual's information processing system. With time we can expect to increase our taxonomic and predictive power by using these causal bio-social theories of individual differences.