The author is pleased to have the opportunity to respond to "Measuring Students' Writing Ability on a Computer-Analytic Developmental Scale: An Exploratory Validity Study." The authors of that article have undertaken a challenging project and seem to be on track to developing a technically adequate, practically useful writing…

Sackett, Borneman, and Connelly argued that several common criticisms of cognitively laden tests are not well supported by the literature. The authors' systematic exploration of research surrounding seven specific criticisms is laudable, and we do not find fault with their conclusions as presented. In evaluating the seven concerns, however, the…

In this article, the authors argue that there are a range of effects usually studied within cognitive psychology that are legitimately thought of as aspects of critical thinking: the cognitive biases studied in the heuristics and biases literature. In a study of 793 student participants, the authors found that the ability to avoid these biases was…

What is the relation between the cognitive competence of a national population that nation's economic prosperity? Lynn and Vanhanen [Lynn, R. & Vanhanen, T. (2002). "IQ and the wealth of nations." Westport, CT: Praeger.] presented data pointing to an exceptionally strong relationship between IQ scores and Gross Domestic Product per…

Differences in 3-month-old infants' vocal responsiveness to vocal-visual stimulation by mothers and strangers has been shown to be related to performance on both the Stanford-Binet at 3 years of age and the Illinois Test of Psycholinguistics at 5 years of age. The present retesting of 12 of the original 14 normal, first-born male subjects, now 12…

Developmental and criterion reading and writing measures were administered to 300 primary-level students, revealing that elimination of IQ in the definition of learning disabilities would dramatically affect who is identified as learning disabled. A two-stage assessment model analyzing absolute criteria without IQ and relative criteria with IQ is…

Research on perceptual and cognitive capacities of the newborn has revealed that state variables typically interfere with or override the neonate's attentional and stimulus processing tendencies. This finding argues for the power of early state variables as behavioral determinants and, further, that neonatal state measures might provide good…

Westbrook (1983) challenged the validity of the construct "career maturity" because measures such as the Career Maturity Inventory Attitude Scale (Crites, 1973) correlate to measures of mental ability. Rather than interpreting this association as evincing lack of discriminant validity, the association should be interpreted as supporting…

This report summarizes the research results and provides a reference. The basic question addressed was, "Is performance on multi-component tasks predicted by performance on the individual components performed separately?" In the first series of experiments, a dual task involving memory and verbal processing components to predict a…

Explanations are offered for observed discrepant and null findings in the area of predictive information about teacher effectiveness. It is argued that if tautologies are to be avoided, only product variables are appropriate criteria of success. Some recommendations regarding future research are offered. (Author/GSK)

Describes a study that examined the relationship between academic ability or aptitude, as measured by grade point average and American College Test scores, and achievement with and without computer-assisted instruction. (15 references) (CLB)

Delineates the current consensus regarding the nature and the development of intellectual ability. Examines when one would expect general abilities to moderate the relationship among domain-specific and other processes. Reviews recent studies in which general abilities were used as independent variables or covariates. Suggests that generally,…

Reviews three alternative cognitive approaches for verbal comprehension. Discusses a theory of learning from context and cites empirical data to support the theory. Presents a componential framework for understanding verbal comprehension and suggests that the ability to acquire information from context is a key source of individual differences in…

Examines potential sources of bias in aptitude and achievement testing of minority and, particularly, Black students. Holds that bias in standardized tests cannot be properly understood without reference to the socioeconomic matrix from which it has evolved. (Author/GC)

Research on reading has tried, and failed, to account for wide disparities in reading skill even among children taught by the same method. Why do some children learn to read easily and quickly while others, in the same classroom and taught by the same teacher, don't learn to read at all? In "Language Development and Learning to Read", Diane…