Predicting school performance from cognitive ability, self-representation, and personality from primary school to senior high school

Abstract We explored the relations between academic performance, cognition, and personality. This study examined 689 participants from 10 to 17 years of age, by a cognitive battery addressing several reasoning domains (inductive, deductive, quantitative, causal, and spatial), and inventories addressing self-representation about reasoning domains and general cognitive processes, and the Big Five factors of personality. School performance in mathematics, science, and language was measured. Cognitive ability strongly and self-representation and personality (conscientiousness) moderately related with school performance. These relations varied with age and ability: the effects of cognitive ability on academic performance decreased and the effects of self-representation and personality increased with increasing age and ability. The implications for cognitive developmental theory and educational implications are discussed.

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