Tässä tutkimuksessa selvitettiin koulun vaihtamisen (yhtenäiskoulu vs. erilliskoulu) ja harrastuneisuuden yhteyksiä nuorten subjektiivisen hyvinvoinnin kehittymiseen. Lisäksi tarkasteltiin sitä, ovatko nämä yhteydet erilaisia riippuen nuoren sukupuolesta. Tutkimuksen aineisto koostui 848 nuoresta, jotka arvioivat harrastuneisuuttaan kuudennen luokan syksyllä ja subjektiivista hyvinvointiaan kuudennen luokan syksyllä sekä seitsemännen luokan syksyllä ja keväällä. Koulun vaihtaminen oli yhteydessä subjektiivisen hyvinvoinnin osa-alueista ainoastaan itsetunnon kehittymiseen: koulua vaihtaneiden itsetunto vahvistui kuudennen luokan syksystä seitsemännen luokan syksyyn, kun taas samassa koulussa pysyneiden itsetunnossa ei tapahtunut muutosta. Harrastuksen puuttuminen näyttäytyi riskitekijänä subjektiivisen hyvinvoinnin kehittymisen kannalta. Nuorilla, joilla ei ollut ollenkaan harrastusta, masennusoireet lisääntyivät ja elämääntyytyväisyys väheni siirtymän aikana enemmän kuin nuorilla, joilla oli ohjattu harrastus. Nuoren sukupuoli ei muuntanut koulun vaihtamisen ja harrastuneisuuden yhteyksiä subjektiivisen hyvinvoinnin kehittymiseen. Sen sijaan koulun vaihtamisen ja harrastuneisuuden yhteydet itsetunnon tasoon riippuivat sukupuolesta. Erityisesti koulua siirtymän aikana vaihtaneiden poikien itsetunto oli tyttöjen itsetuntoa korkeammalla tasolla. Myös ohjatun harrastuksen olemassaolo näyttäytyi erityisen tärkeänä poikien itsetunnon kannalta, kun taas tyttöjen itsetunnon kannalta tärkeää oli harrastuksen olemassaolo riippumatta siitä, oliko se ohjattu vai omaehtoinen.

The lives of people with borderline intellectual functioning (BIF) were retrospectively examined with a population-based sample (N = 416,973), 'Finland-in-Miniature'. Results were compared to those of the general population, to people with mild intellectual disability (MID), and people with learning problems (LP).Results showed that people with BIF had fewer partnerships, lesser employment, and fewer cases of completing secondary school education than peers in general population.They also had higher rates of unemployment and disability pensions.Regarding family, education, and work, people with MID showed lower rates, and those with LP showed higher rates, than people with BIF.It was concluded that people with BIF are more vulnerable than their peers in the general population regarding partnership, education, and work.It is essential that society supports employment for people with BIF.Retrospective utilisation of existing databases is proposed as a promising method of research to widening an understanding of BIF.

Studies have found math anxiety and achievement to be related from the beginning of formal schooling, but the knowledge regarding the direction of the relationship is vague. The purpose of the present study was to study this relationship. We investigated math anxiety from two points of view: trait and state anxiety. In the first substudy, we investigated the longitudinal relationship between math anxiety and performance from sixth to seventh grade ( n = 848) with cross-lagged modeling. In the second substudy, we investigated the situational relationship of anxiety and performance by giving the participants ( n = 149) challenging and nonchallenging math tasks adapted to their skill level, and then examining the association between anxiety and the performance. The results suggest that math anxiety has a small longitudinal effect on performance: High anxiety in sixth grade predicted low performance in seventh grade. Anxiety also had a situational association with performance: when anxiety was aroused, the participants performed more poorly compared to their skill level. The results adduce the two-fold effect of anxiety on achievement: math anxiety seems to have both a real-time association with performance and a long-term effect on the development of basic arithmetic skills.

Studies have found math anxiety and achievement to be related from the beginning of formal schooling, but the knowledge regarding the direction of the relationship is vague. The purpose of the present study was to study this relationship. We investigated math anxiety from two points of view: trait and state anxiety. In the first substudy, we investigated the longitudinal relationship between math anxiety and performance from sixth to seventh grade (n = 848) with cross-lagged modeling. In the second substudy, we investigated the situational relationship of anxiety and performance by giving the participants (n = 149) challenging and nonchallenging math tasks adapted to their skill level, and then examining the association between anxiety and the performance. The results suggest that math anxiety has a small longitudinal effect on performance: High anxiety in sixth grade predicted low performance in seventh grade. Anxiety also had a situational association with performance: when anxiety was aroused, the participants performed more poorly compared to their skill level. The results adduce the two-fold effect of anxiety on achievement: math anxiety seems to have both a real-time association with performance and a long-term effect on the development of basic arithmetic skills.

We examined whether learning experiences (value of success, mastery experience) and task properties (chal-lenge) are related to early adolescents' (n = 190, median age = 12) emotional responses and psychophysiological states (autonomic nervous system, ANS) in achievement situations in an ambulatory laboratory. They completed four achievement tasks (two math and two reading) at different challenge levels in randomized order, and re-ported their learning and task perceptions for each task. The proportion of errors indicated the objective demandingness of each task. As indices of sympathetic nervous system activity, we recorded skin conductance response (SCR) and heart rate (HR), and, as parasympathetic nervous system activity, their heart rate variability (HRV). Following control-value and flow theories, we proposed hypotheses for main and interaction effects and specified multilevel models (tasks nested in persons). Novel findings emerged. Aside from the anticipated main effects, Challenge x Mastery interaction also was related to adolescents' emotions and SCR at the within-person (task) level. Furthermore, Value x Mastery Experience interaction was related to SCR and HRV at the task level, whereas Value x Errors interaction contributed to experienced anger and anxiety at the between-person (indi-vidual) level. The findings provide novel understanding of situational interplay between the value of success, challenge, and mastery experience in adolescents' experienced emotions and psychophysiological states.

This study investigated associations of early adolescents' (N=190, median age = 12) subjectively experienced emotions and psychophysiological reactions in achievement situations. Self-reported questions assessed adolescents' experienced emotions. Additionally, adolescents' autonomic nervous system (ANS) reactions were recorded; skin-conductance response (SCR) and heart rate (HR) were used to measure sympathetic nervous system activity, and heart rate variability (HRV) was used to measure parasympathetic nervous system activity. The between-person-level results of multilevel modeling showed that increased HR was associated with higher levels of hope and fear and that decreased SCR was associated with a higher level of hopelessness. In turn, increased HRV was moderately associated with lower surprise at the within-person level. The results also showed that gender, hyperactivity, depressive symptoms, and cognitive ability moderated some of the associations between experienced emotions and physiological reactions. For example, high hyperactivity was related to stronger associations between SCR and hope and high depressive symptoms were related to a stronger association between HR and surprise. These findings enhance current understandings of connections between experienced emotions and psychophysiological reactions in achievement situations.

Our purpose was to study the frequency of behavioral-emotional problems among children identified with a learning disability (LD). The data were obtained for 579 Finnish children (8–15 years) with reading disability (RD-only), math disability (MD-only), or both (RDMD) assessed at a specialized clinic between 1985 and 2017. We analyzed percentages of children with behavioral-emotional symptoms reaching clinical range (i.e., z score ≥1.5 SDs) and the effects of the LD type, gender, and context (home vs. school) on them. Furthermore, we analyzed the effect of the severity of LD and gender on the amount of behavioral-emotional symptoms reported by teachers and parents. Alarmingly high percentages of children, irrespective of LD type, demonstrated behavioral-emotional problems: more than 37% in Affective, Anxiety, and Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) problems. Contextual variation was large, as more problems were reported by teachers than by mothers. The unique effects of gender and LD type were rare, but the results raised concern for those with MD-only, especially boys. The results underscore the need to draw attention to the importance of assessing children with LD for behavioral-emotional problems and emphasize the importance of teachers’ awareness of behavioral-emotional problems among students with LD and cooperation among child, teacher, and parents in assessment and support planning.

This paper reviews the observations of the Jyväskylä Longitudinal Study of Dyslexia (JLD). The JLD is a prospective family risk study in which the development of children with familial risk for dyslexia (N = 108) due to parental dyslexia and controls without dyslexia risk (N = 92) were followed from birth to adulthood. The JLD revealed that the likelihood of at-risk children performing poorly in reading and spelling tasks was fourfold compared to the controls. Auditory insensitivity of newborns observed during the first week of life using brain event-related potentials (ERPs) was shown to be the first precursor of dyslexia. ERPs measured at six months of age related to phoneme length identification differentiated the family risk group from the control group and predicted reading speed until the age of 14 years. Early oral language skills, phonological processing skills, rapid automatized naming, and letter knowledge differentiated the groups from ages 2.5–3.5 years onwards and predicted dyslexia and reading development, including reading comprehension, until adolescence. The home environment, a child’s interest in reading, and task avoidance were not different in the risk group but were found to be additional predictors of reading development. Based on the JLD findings, preventive and intervention methods utilizing the association learning approach have been developed.

This study examined the role of learning difficulties in academic emotions and achievement across the transition to lower secondary school among 848 Finnish adolescents. Reading difficulties (RD) and math difficulties (MD) were identified based on test scores in Grade 6 and 7. Students with difficulties were identified as having resolving, emerging, or persistent RD/MD. Students rated their academic emotions and information on students' academic achievement was acquired from school registers. The results showed that a decline in academic emotions and achievement was typical among all students across the transition. Resolving, emerging, or persistent types of RD/MD were also meaningfully reflected in the development of academic emotions across the transition. Generally, the results showed that RD/MD students had a higher proclivity to experience more negative academic emotions than their peers, and they lagged behind their peers in achievement across the transition.

This study aimed to examine associations between motivation, emotion, and task performance in simulated achievement situations. A group of sixth grade students (n = 190) completed an achievement task. Situational information on task value, success expectations, emotions, effort, task performance, and causal attributions was collected and information on subsequent academic achievement was obtained from school registers. The results showed, first, that high task value, high expectancy of success, and high positive emotions before a task contributed to a higher level of effort during the task. This, in turn, was related to better task performance. Second, high expectancy of success predicted increased positive emotions during the task, and these in turn, were related to better task performance. Conversely, high negative emotions during the task were related to poorer task performance. Third, high task performance was related to higher levels of effort, higher attributions of success to ability, and increased positive emotions after the task. Finally, both high task performance and attributions of success to ability were related to better subsequent academic achievement.

The aim of this study was twofold: (a) to assess the psychometric properties of the Revised Early Adolescent Temperament Questionnaire (EATQ-R) and the Revised Adult Temperament Questionnaire (ATQ-R) among 685 Finnish early adolescents and their parents and (b) to investigate the extent to which adolescents and their parents share similar temperaments. Temperaments of early adolescents (mean age = 12.23 years) were rated by the adolescents themselves and their parents. The parents also rated their own temperaments. With minor modifications to the theoretical models, the results supported the factorial validity and reliability of the EATQ-R and the ATQ-R among Finnish adolescents and their parents. Correlations between parents' and adolescents' ratings of adolescent temperament were moderately strong, supporting convergent validity. The results lent weak support to rater-independent similarity of temperament (especially on the effortful control dimension) between parents and their adolescents.

This study examined the role of adolescents' (n = 190) temperament in their emotional reactions in achievement situations. Adolescents rated their temperament (i.e., surgency/extraversion, negative affectivity, effortful control) and completed achievement tasks in Grade 6. They also reported their emotions before and during challenging and non-challenging tasks. In addition, adolescents' autonomic nervous system reactions (i.e., skin conductance levels) were recorded. The results showed that high effortful control was related to higher levels of positive emotions independent of the degree of task difficulty. Low negative affectivity and high effortful control were related to lower levels of negative emotions before and during the achievement tasks. High surgency/extraversion was related to lower levels of negative emotions only before the achievement tasks. Finally, low negative affectivity and high effortful control were related to higher skin conductance level before the achievement tasks, whereas high effortful control was related to higher skin conductance level during both challenging and non-challenging achievement tasks. The findings enhance current understanding of the connection between adolescents' temperament and emotions in real-time achievement situations.

BACKGROUND:Academic buoyancy refers to students' ability to come through ordinary challenges they face in the academic context, and it can positively contribute to students' beliefs and behaviours in learning situations. Although buoyancy has been found to be related to positive academic outcomes, previous studies have not examined how buoyancy influences academic emotions in learning situations and how these emotions further affect students' learning-related expectations and behaviours.AIMS:This study investigated to what extent academic buoyancy predicts students' failure expectations, avoidance behaviour, and task-oriented planning in learning situations, and to what extent academic emotions mediate the effect of academic buoyancy on these expectations and behaviours.SAMPLE:A total of 845 Finnish students in the sixth grade of primary school.METHODS:Self-report data for academic buoyancy and academic emotions in the autumn semester and learning-related expectations and behaviours in the spring semester were analysed using structural equation modelling, controlling for gender, grade point average, and previous levels of learning-related expectations and behaviours.RESULTS:The findings showed that high academic buoyancy indirectly predicted lower avoidance behaviour, fewer failure expectations, and higher task-oriented planning via academic emotions. High academic buoyancy was related to high enjoyment and hope as well as low boredom and hopelessness, which further predicted low failure expectations. High hope and low boredom also predicted low avoidance behaviour, and high hope was associated with high task-oriented planning.CONCLUSIONS:The findings suggest that academic buoyancy supports positive expectations and adaptive behaviours in learning situations through the regulation of emotions.

A youth's ability to adapt during educational transitions has long-term, positive impacts on their academic achievement and mental health. Although supportive relationships with parents, peers, and teachers are protective factors associated with successful educational transitions, little is known about the reciprocal link between the quality of these interpersonal relationships and school well-being, with even less known about how these two constructs affect academic achievement. This longitudinal study examined how the quality of interpersonal relationships and school well-being worked together to affect academic achievement during the transition from primary school to lower secondary school. Data were collected from 848 Finnish adolescents (54% girls, mean age at the outset 12.3 years) over the course of sixth and seventh grade. The results support a transactional model illustrating the reciprocal associations between the quality of interpersonal relationships and school well-being during the transition to lower secondary school. As such, the presence of high quality interpersonal relationships promoted higher academic achievement through increased school well-being, whereas high school well-being promoted higher subsequent academic achievement through increased quality of interpersonal relationships. Overall, the results suggest that promoting learning outcomes and helping adolescents with challenges during educational transitions is a critical part of supporting school well-being and the formation of high-quality interpersonal relationships.

We studied the impact of diverse subtypes of learning disabilities (LD) on adult-age mental health, education, and employment by comparing the LD group (n = 430) with a matched control group without a known history of LD (n = 2,149). The clinical archived data were merged with lifelong register data on sickness allowances/disability pensions granted on the basis of psychiatric illnesses, reimbursements for psychoactive medication, having a degree after compulsory education, and having received unemployment allowances. Differences emerged between the LD and control groups in all outcomes, suggesting that a higher proportion of individuals with LD had mental health problems compared to the control group, and a notable share of them had not attained a degree after compulsory education and had been unemployed for an extended period. Subgroup comparisons indicated that math disability (MD) was associated with antidepressant use and unemployment, whereas the reading disability (RD) group showed the least problems with employment. Interactions between subgroup and gender suggested that MD (with/without RD) may pose a higher risk than RD for females, whereas RD seemed to pose a risk for males. The findings suggest the need for researchers, clinicians, and those involved with adult education to consider mental health and educational problems among individuals with LD.

The present study examined to what extent sixth-grade students' academic buoyancy and temperament contributed to their school-related stress. A total of 845 students rated their school-related stress at the beginning and end of the school year and their academic buoyancy at the beginning of the year. Parents rated students' effortful control and negative affectivity. The results showed that high academic buoyancy, high effortful control, and low negative affectivity at the beginning of the school year were related to lower school-related stress at the end of the school year, after controlling for gender, GPA, and previous level of stress. Effortful control and negative affectivity had no significant interaction effect with academic buoyancy on students' school-related stress. The findings of the study suggest that interventions aiming at supporting students' academic buoyancy may also decrease their feelings of school stress. In particular, students with high negative affectivity or low effortful control may need training in stress management skills.

Cognitive assessment in natural group settings facilitates data collection but poses threats to the validity. In this study, tablet-based working memory (WM) tasks, the counting span, and reading span were used in predicting 12-year-old children's (N = 837) scholastic skills and fluid intelligence in a classroom with environmental noise. WM tasks had excellent internal consistency, correlated with scholastic skills, and accounted for more of the variance in cognitive performance (grade point average, fluid intelligence, scholastic skills) compared with individually administered (n = 190) digit span task. Furthermore, the multilevel analysis revealed that compared with the classrooms with no noise, when naturally occurring speech or nonspeech types of environmental noises were present during assessment, WM scores or the reliability estimates were not lower. In contrast, when both types of noises were present, the relationships between some of the WM and achievement scores were even stronger. Thus, assessments in natural classroom contexts may promote revealing the individual differences in WM.

The present study examined adolescents' and mothers' temperament types and their roles in the socioemotional functioning of early adolescents. A total of 869 sixth-grade students and 668 mothers participated in the study. The students rated their temperament and socioemotional functioning and the mothers rated their own temperament. Latent profile analyses identified four temperament types among the adolescents (resilient, reserved, average, and mixed) and three types among the mothers (resilient, average, and mixed). The results showed that the adolescents with resilient or reserved temperaments reported significantly fewer conduct problems and emotional symptoms, less hyperactivity, and higher prosociality than adolescents with a mixed temperament type. The most adaptive adolescent-mother temperament matches were between a resilient or reserved adolescent and a resilient or average mother; these adolescents reported the highest levels of socioemotional functioning. Mothers with mixed or average temperaments were related to fewer conduct problems and emotional symptoms and less hyperactivity among adolescents with a mixed temperament, while mothers with a resilient temperament type were beneficial for prosocial behavior among adolescents with a mixed temperament. These findings increase understanding of the role of temperament and the interplay between adolescents' and mothers' temperaments in the development of early adolescents' socioemotional adjustment.

The aim of this study was to examine the situational associations of reading-related task values and efficacy beliefs with achievement emotions, and whether these associations are moderated by reading difficulties (RD). The sample comprised 128 Finnish sixth-grade students (66 with no reading difficulties [No RD], 31 with mild reading difficulties [Mild RD], and 31 with severe reading difficulties [Severe RD]) who were randomized to complete either a non-challenging or challenging reading task. Students reported their reading-related task values (attainment and interest) and efficacy beliefs right before and their achievement emotions both before and after performing the reading task. The results revealed that the associations of task values and efficacy beliefs with achievement emotions were moderated by RD and task difficulty. High attainment value was related to more positive and less negative emotions, especially for students with Severe RD. In turn, high interest value and efficacy beliefs were related to more positive emotions during the task, especially for students with No RD or Mild RD. Finally, among all students, higher interest value in the face of a non-challenging reading task and higher efficacy beliefs in the face of a challenging reading task were related to less negative emotions. The results provide a novel understanding of the role of RD in the situational associations between reading-related motivation and achievement emotions.