In education research test scores are a common object of analysis. Across studies test scores can be an important outcome, a highly predictive covariate, or a means of assigning treatment. However, test scores are a measure of an underlying proficiency we can't observe directly and so contain error. This measurement error has implications for how…

While research has repeatedly found evidence that readers infer characters' emotions, we investigate three outstanding questions about the content and time course of such inferences. We ask whether even simple narratives give rise to emotion inferences, in what form such inferences are encoded into long-term memory, and whether they are uniquely…

Two experiments tested how the "functional form" of the causal relations that link features of categories affects category-based inferences. Whereas "independent causes" can each bring about an effect by themselves, "conjunctive causes" all need to be present for an effect to occur. The causal model view of category…

This study investigated direct and indirect effects of executive functions on reading comprehension in adolescents (N = 87, M = 14.0 years, SD = 1.5) by testing for parallel mediation of effects of working memory, task-switching, and inhibitory control via decoding and text recall/inference. Working memory showed direct and indirect effects on…

Integrating generic information about categories with knowledge of specific individuals is a critical component of successful inductive inferences. The present study tested whether children's approach to this task systematically shifts as they develop causal understandings of the mechanisms that shape individual action. In the current study, 3-and…

Northwest Evaluation Association™ (NWEA™) is committed to providing partners with useful tools to help make inferences from the Measures of Academic Progress® (MAP®) interim assessment scores. Recently, NWEA completed a concordance study to connect the scales of the New York State Testing Program (NYSTP) reading and math with those of the MAP…

This morphosyntactic dissertation study compares the use of MOOD (indicative & subjunctive) in first- and second-generation Spanish speakers in New York City. The data for this study are from a transcription of naturalistic Spanish conversations with New Yorkers of different generations, representing the six primary Spanish-speaking groups in…

Identifying whether suicides in a region are due to characteristics of the residents living there or to some enduring feature of the region is difficult when using cross-sectional studies. To distinguish these factors, we compared the suicides of a region's residents with people who were temporarily visiting the region. Using U.S. death records…

The eastern half of New York State is a dialectologically diverse region around which several dialect regions converge--the Inland North, New York City, Western New England, and Canada. These regions differ with respect to major parameters of North American English phonological variation; and therefore the interface between them is of interest…

This study examined whether or not preschool teachers attended to instances requiring inference-making in story books. Thirty-one preschool teachers were asked to read three fictional story books and to identify parts of the story that would be difficult for young children to interpret. Additionally, they were asked to construct questions that…

The objective of the present investigation was to compare the adequacy of two cognitive models for predicting examinee performance on a sample of algebra I and II items from the March 2005 administration of the SAT[TM]. The two models included one generated from verbal reports provided by 21 examinees as they solved the SAT[TM] items, and the…

This paper outlines new work in cross-cultural psychology largely drawn from Nisbett, Choi, and Smith ("Cognition," 65, 15-32, 1997); Nisbett, Peng, Choi, & Norenzayan, "Psychological Review," 108(2), 291-310, 2001; Nisbett, "The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently...and Why." New…

Research Findings: This study analyzed the school readiness beliefs of parents of 452 children from public pre-kindergarten and the relations of these beliefs to socioeconomic status and children's readiness skills. Parents conceived readiness largely in terms of the ability to name objects, letters, or numbers, but few included inferential…

This guest editorial describes ways teachers can use guessing games about an unknown item in a "mystery box" to help children improve their abilities to listen to others, recall information, ask purposeful questions, classify items by class, make inferences, synthesize information, and draw conclusions. The author presents information…

The consequences of large state testing are often uniformity of expectations for achievement. The largest impact of higher standards, then, are realized by traditionally disenfranchised student populations, particularly the least affluent who are most likely to bear the yoke of low expectation. This paper advances S. Messick's (1981) fundamental…