Although it is widely known that reading plays a significant role in mathematics performance, it remains unclear how specific reading component skills and item characteristics are associated with adults' mathematics performance. The aim of this study was to investigate reading component skills (printed vocabulary, sentence processing, passage…

The test of understanding graphs in kinematics (TUG-K) has widely been used to assess students' understanding of this subject. The TUG-K poses different objectives to the test takers such as (1) the selection of a graph from a textual description, (2) the selection of corresponding graphs, and (3) the selection of a textual description from a…

Providing test questions after an initial study phase is a common instructional technique. In theory, questions that require higher-level (deep) processing should be more beneficial than those that require lower-level (shallow) processing. However, empirical evidence on the matter is inconsistent. To shed light on two potential reasons for these…

This classroom experiment investigates the effects of adding representational pictures to multiple-choice and constructed-response test items to understand the role of the response format for the multimedia effect in testing. Participants were 575 fifth- and sixth-graders who answered 28 science test items--seven items in each of four experimental…

Although non-cognitive facets--such as interest, attitudes, commitment, self-concept and so on--of are prevalent in contemporary theoretical modeling of competence, they are often neglected in measurement approaches or measured only by global self-report questionnaires. Based on the well-established experience sampling method (ESM) and following…

Although the general development of mathematical abilities in primary school has been the focus of many researchers, the development of place value understanding has rarely been investigated to date. This is possibly due to the lack of conceptual approaches and empirical studies related to this topic. To fill this gap, a theory-driven and…

Scholastic tests regard cognitive abilities to be domain-specific competences. However, high correlations between competences indicate either high task similarity or a dependence on common factors. The present rating study examined the validity of 12 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and Third or Trends in International…

Given the key role of conversions of representations for mathematical understanding, it is highly relevant to investigate in detail competencies regarding conversions of representations. In particular, a corresponding competence model should not only be developed theoretically, but also examined empirically. However, such empirical studies are…

The study of human performance on discrete optimization problems has a considerable history that spans various disciplines. The two most widely studied problems are the Euclidean traveling salesperson problem and the quadratic assignment problem. The purpose of this paper is to outline a program of study for the measurement of human performance on…