This study investigated the psychometric properties of a number of neuropsychological tests adapted for use in sub-Saharan Africa. A total of 308 school-age children in a predominantly rural community completed the tests. These tests were developed to assess skills similar to those measured by assessments of cognitive development published for use…

Just as objectivist theories have provided foundations for traditional tests, constructivist theories can offer foundations for performance assessment design and development methods. The tenets and principles embedded in various learning theories provide a solid foundation that can be combined with psychometric principles to help assessment…

Items of mental rotation tests can not only be solved by mental rotation but also by other solution strategies. A multigroup latent class analysis of 24 items of the Mental Rotations Test (MRT) was conducted in a sample of 1,695 German pupils and students to find out how many solution strategies can be identified for the items of this test. The…

Relational complexity (RC) theory conceptualizes an individual's processing capacity and a task's complexity along a common ordinal metric. The authors describe the development of the Latin Square Task (LST) that assesses the influence of RC on reasoning. The LST minimizes the role of knowledge and storage capacity and thus refines the…

DIVERGENT THINKING TESTS, WHICH MEASURE THE ABILITY TO PRODUCE DIVERSE RESPONSES TO PROBLEMS THAT HAVE NO SINGLE ANSWER, AND CONVENTIONAL TESTS OF CONVERGENT THINKING WERE COMPARED TO DETERMINE IF THE TWO TYPES OF TESTS REPRESENTED MORE THAN ONE DOMAIN OF PSYCHOLOGICAL APTITUDE. ALL STUDENTS IN A GENERAL PSYCHOLOGY COURSE WERE TESTED, AND COMPLETE…

The complexity and rapid expansion of the entire field of psychology make it appropriate to speak of "psychologies" when acknowledging the need for specialization of training and expertise. Nevertheless, unifying trends (UTs) exist in psychology, even though there can be no single set of theoretical principles to account for all empirical…

Three studies are described in which choice reaction time (RT) was related to such psychometric ability measures as verbal comprehension, numerical reasoning, hidden figures, and progressive matrices tests. Fairly consistent negative correlations were found between these tests and choice RT when high school samples were used. (Author/CTM)

Explored validity of new clinical test of verbal memory incorporating constructs from normal and pathological memory research, to quantify the ways examinees learn verbal material. Factor analyses of normal subjects and neurological patients indicated that verbal memory consisted of a number of component factors, reflecting learning strategy,…

Three developments over the past 15 years--our understanding of cognition, new techniques in technical psychometrics, and the computer explosion--form the basis for a proposal for new intelligence tests. These developments are reviewed, and both leaps and steps in intellectual assessment are proposed. (Author/RD)

The Stroop Color-Word Test was administered to 1,856 cognitively screened, healthy Dutch-speaking participants aged 24 to 81 years. The effects of age, gender, and education on Stroop test performance were investigated to adequately stratify the normative data. The results showed that especially the speed-dependent Stroop scores (time to complete…

In Piaget's developmental psychology the fourth and highest stage of human cognitive development is that of formal operations. The research on formal thought instruments is outlined. This study was designed to construct and validate paper-and-pencil instruments which could be used to select students capable of abstract conceptualization,…

Cognitive differences between 987 LD children and 178 EH children in public schools on a psychoeducational assessment battery were studied, and differences in factor structure were investigated. Caution is suggested in interpreting the results of multivariate statistical analyses, which indicated heterogeneity in the matrices of LD and EH…