We explore student performance on True-False assessments with statements in the conditional form "If P then Q" in order to better understand how students process conditional logic and to see whether logical misconceptions impede students' ability to demonstrate mathematical knowledge. We administered an online assessment to a population…

Evidence-based knowledge about intellectual giftedness is important for identifying, counseling, and fostering intellectually gifted students. How much teachers actually know about intellectual giftedness is unclear because previous studies have relied solely on self-reports. This study aimed to: (a) develop a test for the assessment of teachers'…

Refutation-style texts have been considered a viable strategy for changing psychological misconceptions. The current study aims to integrate refutation-style texts into a classroom-based method of learning. Psychology students were administered a true/false misconception survey and then viewed several refutation-style poster presentations…

We have developed simple data-mining algorithms to assess the consistency and the randomness of student responses to problems consisting of multiple true or false statements. In this paper we describe the algorithms and use them to analyze data from introductory physics courses. We investigate statements that emerge as outliers because the class…

Misconceptions about psychology are prevalent among introductory students. Just how prevalent and what can be done to change these misconceptions depends on valid methods of assessment. The most common method of assessment, the true/false questionnaire, is problematic. The present study compared true/false with forced choice formats to determine…

In the present set of experiments, we systematically examined the processes that occur while reading texts designed to refute and explain commonsense beliefs that reside in readers' long-term memory. In Experiment 1 (n = 36), providing readers with a refutation-plus-explanation of a commonsense belief was sufficient to significantly reduce…

Some pre-instructional misconceptions held by children can persist through scientific instruction and resist changes. Identifying these misconceptions would be beneficial for science instruction. In this preliminary study, scores on a 60-item true-false test of knowledge and misconceptions about earthquakes were compared with previous interview…