The relative difficulty of seven test wiseness skills was studied with 243 undergraduates, who completed a measure of such skills. The use of specific determiners as a cue was significantly more challenging than eliminating irrelevant alternatives, selecting the alternative with the most information, or using grammar cues. (SLD)

Compared three methods for developing a common metric under item response theory through simulation. For smaller numbers of common items, linking using the characteristic curve method yielded smaller root mean square differences for both item discrimination and difficulty parameters. For larger numbers of common items, the three methods were…

An item response theory model based on the Rasch model is proposed for composite tasks, those decomposed into subtasks of different kinds. The model, which is illustrated with an application to spelling tasks, constrains the difficulties of the composite tasks to be linear combinations of the difficulties of the subtask items. (SLD)

Ensuring item and pool security in a continuous testing environment is explored through a new method of controlling exposure rate of items conditional on ability level in computerized testing. Properties of this conditional control on exposure rate, when used in conjunction with a particular adaptive testing algorithm, are explored using simulated…

A statistic used by R. Meijer (1994) to determine person-fit referred to the number of errors from the deterministic Guttman model (L. Guttman, 1950), but this was, in fact, based on the number of errors from the deterministic Guttman model as defined by J. Loevinger (1947, 1948). (SLD)

Proposes a metatheory of problem solving. Describes differences among problems in terms of their structured ness, domain specificity (abstractness), and complexity; describes individual differences that affect problem solving; and presents a typology of problems, each of which engages different cognitive, affective, and conative process and…

Experimental analyses for improving reading fluency deficits have rarely targeted generalized increases in academic responding. As a consequence, the variables that may help students to generalize newly learned forms of academic responding like reading are not well understood. Furthermore, experimental analyses of reading fluency interventions…

This study examined learned helplessness and its effect on test taking. Students were given one of two tests; the first began with extremely difficult questions and the other started with easy questions. The researchers hypothesized that those who took the test beginning with difficult questions would become easily frustrated and possibly doubt…

One hundred years have passed since the birth of factor analysis, during which time there have been some major developments and extensions to the methodology. Unfortunately, one issue where the widespread accumulation of knowledge has been rather slow concerns identification. This article provides a didactic discussion of the topic in an attempt…

A category effect (i.e., living vs. nonliving exemplars) in confrontation naming has been reported in association with various cerebral pathologies. However, the published reports conflict as to the presence of this category effect in normal controls. The present experiment included 90 subjects in three age groups (young, young-elderly, and…

Sixth-grade students were exposed to two pairs of mathematics assignments. Assignment Pair A included a high-effort and a moderate-effort assignment, each containing 18 three-digit by two-digit (3x2) problems. Assignment Pair B was similar except the high-effort assignment contained six additional one-digit by one-digit (1x1) problems interspersed…

Culture is a complex process. Many authors show the importance of the concept of culture in organizations. The question which arises is how to approach the cultural problematic of organizations. The paper proposes that the traditional ways--based on the Cartesian epistemology--do not match with the cultural complexity, since it simplifies too much…

Purpose: This pilot study examined the extent and nature of associations in the linguistic complexity used by child and clinician within conversational interactions. Method: Correlation analyses focused on semantic and morphosyntactic language sample measures from an experienced speech-language clinician and 29 children with language impairment.…

In a task choice situation, why do some students spontaneously choose challenging tasks while others do not? In the study, 114 undergraduate students were first asked of their perceived competence and interest in solving number puzzles at both individual and situational levels, and then asked to choose one puzzle from four difficulty levels. They…

This paper reports the results of four dual-task experiments that were designed to determine the extent of domain-specificity of the verbal working memory resources used in linguistic integrations. To address this question, syntactic complexity was crossed in a 2x2 design with the complexity of a secondary task, which involved either (1)…