The forced-choice (FC) item formats used for noncognitive tests typically develop a set of response options that measure different traits and instruct respondents to make judgments among these options in terms of their preference to control the response biases that are commonly observed in normative tests. Diagnostic classification models (DCMs)…

A simulation study was conducted to explore the impact of differential item functioning (DIF) on general factor difference estimation for bifactor, ordinal data. Common analysis misspecifications in which the generated bifactor data with DIF were fitted using models with equality constraints on noninvariant item parameters were compared under data…

Learners' adaptation to academic trajectory is shaped by several influencing factors that ought to be considered while attempting to design an intervention towards improving academic performance. Emotion is one factor that influences students' academic orientation and performance. Tracking emotions in text by psychologists have long been a subject…

Purpose: Emotion classification for auditory stimuli typically employs 1 of 2 approaches (discrete categories or emotional dimensions). This work presents a new emotional speech set, compares these 2 classification methods for emotional speech stimuli, and emphasizes the need to consider the entire communication model (i.e., the talker, message,…

Impairments in recognizing subtle facial expressions, in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), may relate to difficulties in constructing prototypes of these expressions. Eighteen children with predominantly intellectual low-functioning ASD (LFA, IQ <80) and two control groups (mental and chronological age matched), were assessed for…

Recent research has established that contrast can exert a powerful effect on early word learning. This study examined the role of contrast in young children's ability to learn proper names. Preschoolers heard a novel word for an unfamiliar stuffed animal in the presence of a second stuffed animal of either the same or a different kind.…

Cyber-bullying has become increasingly problematic in academic settings including universities and colleges. The bullying literature has been expanding investigation of the bully behaviors and has identified four bully types to include pure offender, pure victim, offender and victim, neither-offender-nor-victim. The majority of research has…

Exploring how people represent natural categories is a key step toward developing a better understanding of how people learn, form memories, and make decisions. Much research on categorization has focused on artificial categories that are created in the laboratory, since studying natural categories defined on high-dimensional stimuli such as…

This study, conducted in June 2014 in Kampala, Uganda, is a follow-up to a similar study conducted in Colorado Springs, Colorado, in 2008. The basic research question addressed is: "What are the experiences in the lives of upper elementary-aged Ugandan children that foster an intrinsic motivation to seek information?" A secondary…

Metaphor becomes the subject of interest for many researchers in recent decades. The main purpose of the present study was to investigate the universality of emotion metaphorical conceptualization and the dominant pattern in English and Persian based on Kovecses's (2003) model for Linguistic expression of Metaphor. The emotions under study were…

A hierarchical cluster analysis of the time course of the videotaped reactions of 75 Chinese 2-4-year olds to mothers' toy-removal identified Distress, Low Anger, and High Anger behavior clusters. Anger often begins at low intensity; some children then escalate. The face-validity of Low and High Anger-cluster classifications was supported in that…

Research examining child-care providers' beliefs and behaviour has produced contradictory evidence perhaps because analyses commonly examine providers as a homogenous group. Among providers in the Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, we used cluster analysis to identify groups based on profiles of beliefs. We found evidence for five…

Over the past decade, there has been growing interest in real-time assessment of student engagement and motivation during interactions with educational software. Detecting symptoms of disengagement, such as off-task behavior, has shown considerable promise for understanding students' motivational characteristics during learning. In this paper, we…

Domestic violence is a serious problem with far-reaching consequences. This study applies a new methodology to derive subtypes of male perpetrators of intimate partner violence. As part of a larger National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)-funded study, a national sample of randomly selected psychologists and psychiatrists describe 188 adult male…

Background: Stress and other mental health issues can negatively impact the health and academic performance of college students. Purpose: Examine relationships among stress, mental health, and academic classification in a national sample of college students. Methods: Analyses utilized secondary data from 27 387 college students responding to the…