Epistemic curiosity (EC) is the desire to obtain new knowledge capable of either producing positive experiences of intellectual interest (I-type) or of reducing undesirable conditions of informational deprivation (D-type). Although researchers acknowledge that there are individual differences in young children's epistemic curiosity, there are…

This article analyzes latent variable models from a cognitive psychology perspective. We start by discussing work by Tuerlinckx and De Boeck (2005), who proved that a diffusion model for 2-choice response processes entails a 2-parameter logistic item response theory (IRT) model for individual differences in the response data. Following this line…

This article describes the development and evaluation of a short form of the 24-item Adaptation to Age-Related Vision Loss (AVL) scale. The evaluation provided evidence of the reliability and validity of the short form (the AVL12), for significant interindividual differences at the baseline and for individual-level change in AVL scores over time.…

The Early Development Index (EDI) is a teacher-completed checklist, intended to be a population-level tool to measure children's readiness for school and to alert communities to potential developmental problems in children. In response to the increasing popularity of the EDI, this paper provides a critical and timely evaluation and identifies the…

A development study involving 498 supervisors and a series of validity studies involving 531 adults identified primary dimensions, psychometric characteristics, and construct validation evidence for internal ability, internal propensity, and external propensity as domain-specific measures of feedback. Theoretical and practical extensions of the…

Measurement and psychometric quality of the Sternberg task (S. Sternberg, 1966, 1969), a memory search task, was investigated with 78 undergraduates. Individual performance was fairly homogeneous across responses, fairly unstable over time, and fairly stable across stimulus content. Implications for individual differences research are discussed.…

This study analyzed the relative efficacy of normative (population relative) and ipsative (person relative) measures for the study of intraindividual and interindividual differences in child ability. Ipsative ability measures were found to be uniformly inferior to their normative counterparts and conveyed no uniquely useful information. (Author/DB)

This report is based on the assessment of ICT (information and communication technology) literacy conducted in October 2005. It describes the development of a computer-based tool for assessing ICT literacy among school students and the application of that tool with a nationally representative sample of approximately 7,400 students from Years 6 and…

The methodological implications of using instructional information combined with the usual test item responses are discussed as they affect the linkage of achievement measurement and instruction. Models that expand those of standard Item Response Theory (IRT) are illustrated using achievement data from the United States sample of the Second…

In this study, the author tested the reliability, concurrent validity, and predictive validity of three hemispheric cognitive style instruments: (a) the Preference Test (PT; R. Zenhausern, 1978), (b) the Polarity Questionnaire (PQ; B. E. Morton, 2002), and (c) the Wagner Preference Inventory II (WAPI II; R. F. Wagner & K. A. Wells, 1985).…