Spatial ability has been valued as a talent domain and as an assessment form that reduces cultural, linguistic, and socioeconomic status biases, yet little is known of the spatial ability of students in gifted programs compared with those in general education. Spatial ability is considered an important indicator of potential talent in the domains…

The research supporting this paper addresses the problem of educational communication efficacy using a dual methodology strategy. Over 1,200 questionnaires were given out to professionals in four institutions dedicated to persuasive communication; two traditional--the church and schools--and two more recently created--journalism and advertising.…

Sequential regression was used to evaluate whether language-related working memory components uniquely predict reading and writing achievement beyond cognitive-linguistic translation for students in Grades 4 through 9 (N = 103) with specific learning disabilities (SLDs) in subword handwriting (dysgraphia, n = 25), word reading and spelling…

This study examined associations between broad cognitive abilities (Fluid Reasoning [Gf], Short-Term Working Memory [Gwm], Long-Term Storage and Retrieval [Glr], Processing Speed [Gs], Comprehension-Knowledge [Gc], Visual Processing [Gv], and Auditory Processing [Ga]) and reading achievement (Basic Reading Skills, Reading Rate, Reading Fluency,…

Curriculum-assessment alignment is a well known foundation for good practice in educational assessment, for items' curricular validity purposes. Nowadays instruments are designed to measure pupils' competencies in one or more areas of competence. Sub-competence areas could be defined theoretically and statistical analysis of empirical data by…

Ninety university undergraduate students were tested on a number of tasks assessing their recognition of possible and impossible figures, mental rotation, ideational fluency, and self-report artistic and creative characteristics. Scores on the Impossible Figures Task (IFT-14) and the Mental Rotation Test, and self-ratings on the Artistic…

To assess Feuerstein's Learning Potential Assessment Device's (LPAD) ability to identify deficient cognitive functions, Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices were administered to 176 elementary/junior high students--25 percent were rescored--and 12 complete LPAD reports from a university educational clinic were reanalyzed. Correlations were…

Reciprocal teaching is an instructional procedure designed to teach students cognitive strategies that might result in improved reading comprehension. This review of 16 quantitative studies generally supports the efficacy of reciprocal teaching but also indicates the need for further research into cognitive strategy instruction. (SLD)

Theories of learning and instruction usually are grounded in psychological and epistemological assumptions. However, these theories ignore the child in relation to his or her cultural and institutional context and ignore the schoolteacher from the social context that regulates the process of transmission and acquisition of knowledge and skills.…

Issues that must be addressed in designing procedures for aggregating portfolio data are considered. These issues have profound implications for what is aggregated and how data are collected, combined, and interpreted. Portfolio assessment occurs at the intersection of instruction and assessment; it requires students to collect and reflect on…

The educational significance of wrong answers on multiple choice tests was investigated in over 4,000 subjects, aged 7 to 20. Gorham's Proverbs Test--which requires the interpretation of a proverb sentence--was administered and repeated five months later. Four questions were addressed: (1) what can the pattern of answer choice, across age, using…

Cognitive clusters from the Woodcock-Johnson III (WJ III) Tests of Cognitive Abilities that measure select Cattell-Horn-Carroll broad and narrow cognitive abilities were shown to be significantly related to mathematics achievement in a large, nationally representative sample of children and adolescents. Multiple regression analyses were used to…

An age-dependent answer-selection sequence of answers on multiple-choice tests suggested by previous studies was supported using statistical rather than clinical means. Results with 2,810 students aged 88 months through 241 months given a reading comprehension test twice during a 5-month interval support the systematically connected age-dependent…