Three elementary aged students with autism participated in an evaluation of computer based video instruction that targeted functional life skills. The effects of the software were analyzed in the context of a multiple probe design across and replicated across participants. This study represents a departure from more traditional video based…

Three examples of genetics and evolution simulation concerning Mendelian inheritance, genetic mapping, and natural selection are used to illustrate the use of simulations in modeling scientific/natural processes. First described is the HERED series, which illustrates such phenomena as incomplete dominance, multiple alleles, lethal alleles,…

The relative positions of the sun, moon, and earth, their movements, and their relationships are abstract and difficult to understand astronomical concepts in elementary school science. This study proposes a three-dimensional (3-D) virtual reality (VR) model named the "Sun and Moon System." This e-learning resource was designed by…

According to the recent Nation's Report Card, 12th-graders failed to produce gains on the 2005 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) despite earning better grades on average. One possible explanation is that 12th-graders were not motivated taking the NAEP, which is a low-stakes test. We develop three Bayesian IRT mixture models to…

The stochastic simulation of chemical reactions, specifically, a simple reversible chemical reaction obeying the first-order, i.e., linear, rate law, has been presented by Martinez-Urreaga and his collaborators in this journal. The current contribution is intended to complement and augment their work in two aspects. First, the simple reversible…

This article reviews current methods for evaluating models in the cognitive sciences, including theoretically based approaches, such as Bayes factors and minimum description length measures; simulation approaches, including model mimicry evaluations; and practical approaches, such as validation and generalization measures. This article argues…

This study aims to be a contribution to a theoretical model that explains the effectiveness of the learning and decision-making processes by means of a feedback and mental models perspective. With appropriate mental models, managers should be able to improve their capacity to deal with dynamically complex contexts, in order to achieve long-term…

People tend to perceive ongoing continuous activity as series of discrete events. This partitioning of continuous activity may occur, in part, because events correspond to dynamic patterns that have recurred across different contexts. Recurring patterns may lead to reliable sequential dependencies in observers' experiences, which then can be used…

Georgia Educational Models (GEM) will proceed to utilize computers and simulation to their fullest cost effectiveness potential simultaneously in operation and in research, while avoiding both the restrictions and duplications which come from doctrinaire insistence on maintaining an artificial separation between management and research uses of…

Two approaches are described with their philosophic implications: building a model as preliminary to simulation game design, and discovering a model after the game has been developed. A third alternative presented attempts to span the chasm created by the first two and integrate both design processes. (VT)

An outline of a basic debriefing structure which the author considers applicable to most simulation games in the classroom. (AK)

Extended conventional two-group differential item function (DIF) analysis for dichotomous items to factorial DIF analysis for polytomous items where multiple grouping factors with multiple groups in each are analyzed jointly. Simulation studies and analysis of a real data set with 1,924 subjects show the parameters of the proposed modeling can be…

Provides a framework for viewing local dependency within dichotomous and polytomous items that are clustered by design and presents a testing procedure that allows researchers to identify individual item pairs that exhibit local dependency while controlling for a false positive rate. Simulation results indicate that the proposed method is…