Sensitivity analyses can inform evidence-based education policy by quantifying the hypothetical conditions necessary to change an inference. Perhaps the most prevalent index used for sensitivity analyses is Oster's (2019) Coefficient of Proportionality (COP). Oster's COP leverages changes in estimated effects and R[superscript 2] when observed…

Heterogeneity is commonplace in meta-analysis. When heterogeneity is found, researchers often aim to identify predictors that account for at least part of such heterogeneity by using mixed-effects meta-regression models. Another potentially relevant goal is to focus on the amount of heterogeneity as a function of one or more predictors, but this…

Background: Executive function (EF) is significantly associated with reading comprehension outcomes, yet the interaction between EF and critical language skills (including vocabulary, morphological awareness (MA) and syntactic knowledge), across these levels of reading comprehension (literal, inferential and evaluative comprehension) has rarely…

Researchers across many fields have called for greater attention to heterogeneity of treatment effects--shifting focus from the average effect to variation in effects between different treatments, studies, or subgroups. True heterogeneity is important, but many reports of heterogeneity have proved to be false, non-replicable, or exaggerated. In…

To better understand the developmental trajectory of children's pragmatic development, studies that examine more than one type of implicature as well as associated linguistic and cognitive factors are required. We investigated three- to five-year-old English-speaking children's (N = 71) performance in ad hoc quantity, scalar quantity and relevance…

Analyzing constructed responses, such as think-alouds or self-explanations, can reveal valuable information about readers' comprehension strategies. The current study expands on the extant work by (1) investigating combinations and patterns of comprehension strategies that readers use and (2) examining the extent to which these patterns relate to…

Analyzing constructed responses, such as think-alouds or self-explanations, can reveal valuable information about readers' comprehension strategies. The current study expands on the extant work by (1) investigating combinations and patterns of comprehension strategies that readers use and (2) examining the extent to which these patterns relate to…

This study was conducted to better understand the difficulties faced by underprepared college readers, including those enrolled in Developmental Education (DE) programs. The Reading Systems Framework was used as a theoretical motivation. Participants (n = 258) completed a measure of component reading skills (Study Aid and Reading Assessment, word…

Halo effects in teacher judgments, can occur when the assessment of one aspect of a person's achievement is generalised to another aspect of achievement for that same person. We conducted an experimental study in which participants (N = 107) had to grade vignettes of the same student in two different subjects. The first vignette described either a…

Research on monolingual children has shown that listening comprehension is predicted by a range of language and cognitive skills; less is known about predictors of listening comprehension in bilingual children and about the role of language input. This study presents longitudinal data on predictors of English listening comprehension in 100…

We consider two-level models where a continuous response R and continuous covariates C are assumed missing at random. Inferences based on maximum likelihood or Bayes are routinely made by estimating their joint normal distribution from observed data R[subscript obs] and C[subscript obs]. However, if the model for R given C includes random…

Lexical inference refers to the ability to make informed guesses about the meaning of an unknown word. This inferencing ability is affected by learner-related (i.e., morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge) and language-related (i.e., word semantic transparency) factors. Previous studies have shown that these factors play independent…

When estimating an average treatment effect with observational data, it's possible to get an unbiased estimate of the causal effect if all confounding variables are observed and reliably measured. In education, confounding variables are often latent constructs. Covariate selection methods used in causal inference applications assume that all…

Verbal and nonverbal forms of thinking exhibit widespread dissociation at neural and behavioral level. The importance of this for children's causal thinking and its implications for school science are largely unknown. Assessing 5- to 10-year-olds' responses (N = 231), verbal ability predicted causal reasoning, but only at lower levels, while…

The inference mediation hypothesis (IMH) assumes that individual difference factors that affect reading proficiency have direct and indirect effects on comprehension outcomes, with the indirect effects involving inference processes. The present study tested the IMH in a diverse sample of two and four-year college students in a task that emphasizes…