Jacques Grégoire

The French adaptation of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale of Children, 5th edition (WISC-V) was an opportunity to examine if some common representations of gender differences in intellectual abilities are supported by empirical evidence. The WISC-V standardization sample provided data on a wide range of cognitive tests in a large sample of 6- to 16-year-old children representative of the French population. This sample included 517 boys and 532 girls. The WISC-V data were compared to those of the French standardization samples of three previous versions of the WISC (WISC-R, WISC-III, and WISC-IV). These four standardization samples span a 35-year period. The data analysis of the WISC-V standardization sample and the three previous versions of this intelligence scale showed that the performance gaps on intellectual tests between girls and boys have gradually narrowed over time. Almost no gender differences were observed in the WISC-V standardization sample, not only in IQ but also in key facets of intelligence. Data do not support the stereotype that girls are better at verbal tasks and boys are better at visuospatial tasks. However, some statistically significant differences remain, but the magnitude was generally small with no practical implications. The only important difference is in favor of girls and concerns performance on processing speed tasks that require visual discrimination, attentional control, and writing.

Sanz, M., & Sanchou, P. (2007). Éducateurs techniques spécialisés : quelles fonctions ? Ramonville-Saint-Agne : Éres. An article from journal Revue de psychoéducation (Volume 39, Number 1, 2010, pp. 1-119), on Érudit.

Although being fundamental for both clinical and educational work with children, there is currently no in‐depth research on examining children's emotion awareness and vocabulary in Vietnam. The goal of this exploratory study is to determine the effect of children's gender, grade level, and socioeconomic background on their emotion awareness and vocabulary, and the semantic and grammatical diversity of Vietnamese children's emotional vocabulary. The sample included 264 Vietnamese children (M = 7.80, SD = .97, 43.18% boys) as well as their mothers. Quantitative findings suggested that children in Grade 3 more frequently quoted surprise‐ and anger‐related vocabulary than did those in lower grades. Children's socioeconomic background had a significant effect on both emotion awareness and vocabulary whereas gender did not. Qualitative analysis revealed diverse grammatical types to describe emotions, except idioms, as well as the presence of body‐related emotion vocabulary within children's records. Finally, a high prevalence of emotion words such as “happy” and “sad” was subject to further cross‐cultural review.

Emotional intelligence (EI) can be defined as the ability to identify, express, understand, manage, and use emotions. EI has been shown to have an important impact on health, relationships, and work/academic performance. In this article, we present a systematic review of 46 EI intervention studies on adult populations in order to assess their outcomes. Overall, these findings provide some support for the efficacy of EI programs. However, important limitations in most of the studies restrict the generalizability of their results. We discuss the contributions and limitations of these studies and make recommendations for the development and implementation of future interventions.

Creativity is a crucial issue in science. Scientific research should not be restricted to the logical development and application of known ideas, but should promote new ideas to expand knowledge beyond the existing frontiers. Stimulating scientific creativity means not only giving a boost to creative thinking, but also taking into account the factors that put a brake on creativity. This article is devoted to factors that keep scientific creativity in check and how we could address them. We analyze several obstacles lying inside and outside the researcher’s mind. The most important obstacles inside the researcher’s mind are epistemological obstacles and cognitive bias (confirmation bias). While the most important obstacle outside are the social norms, i.e. the pressure for the scientific community and, sometimes, the whole society, to conform to the dominant scientific model. We conclude with some proposals to overcome these obstacles.

Mathematical creativity is rooted in the intellectual abilities and personality traits of each individual, in which the direct influence of education is only moderate. However, education could have more influence on three important components of creativity: expertise, original thinking, and intrinsic motivation, which underlie individual creative potential. At school, the development of the students’ creative potential should start from the teachers’ mathematical education. Only expert and creative teachers can provide the appropriate environment for developing students’ creativity. To develop their original thinking, students should have the opportunity to work with ill-posed and open-ended problems, to go wrong and make mistakes, and to find different solutions to the same problems. Through these experiences, associated with positive emotions, students should develop an intrinsic motivation for creativity in mathematics.