Innovation is the lifeblood of companies, while simultaneously being one of the most difficult and elusive processes to manage. Failure rates are high--varying between six out of ten to nine out of ten--while the need to innovate is high. Departing from a real-life case of a company, Sara Lee/Douwe Egberts, that has set learning within and from…

Four item response theory (IRT) models were compared using data from tests where multiple items were grouped into testlets focused on a common stimulus. In the bi-factor model each item was treated as a function of a primary trait plus a nuisance trait due to the testlet; in the testlet-effects model the slopes in the direction of the testlet…

Phonologic treatments have traditionally been designed to teach a target speech sound starting with presumed easy teaching tasks and progressing to harder tasks. This investigation evaluated the effects on single-phoneme acquisition, generalization, and maintenance of Concurrent Treatment, which randomly intermixed presumed easy and hard teaching…

How individual differences in cognitive ability influence acquisition and transfer of strategic comparison skills was examined as a function of learning difficulty. Using a cognitive test battery, we classified forty-nine participants into three cognitive ability groups. Participants in each group were trained to compare similar (difficult…

Categorization researchers typically present single objects to be categorized. But real-world categorization often involves object recognition within complex scenes. It is unknown how the processes of categorization stand up to visual complexity or why they fail facing it. The authors filled this research gap by blending the categorization and…

Relational complexity (RC) theory conceptualizes an individual's processing capacity and a task's complexity along a common ordinal metric. The authors describe the development of the Latin Square Task (LST) that assesses the influence of RC on reasoning. The LST minimizes the role of knowledge and storage capacity and thus refines the…

The dance studio typically features a wall of mirrors; however, there has been little research on the pedagogical advantages and disadvantages of mirrors in the training environment. Psychological studies on objective self-awareness, the ability to see one's self as an object, suggest that the mirrors magnify this state. How this increased…

Objectives: To illustrate how cognitive interviewing techniques can be used to identify question-response problems for poorer and less educated survey respondents and to describe how qualitative analyses of interviews can improve survey questionnaires. Methods: A cognitive interviewing project testing a general health questionnaire was…

In this cross-national study, the authors compared mathematics self-efficacy beliefs of American (n = 107) and Taiwanese (n = 188) middle-school students for level and calibration (accuracy and bias). Taiwanese students surpassed Americans in math achievement. American students evidenced slightly higher self-efficacy levels for easy math items but…

Reading is a complex skill, vital for the postgraduate student. However, many international postgraduate students experience considerable difficulty when applying their reading practices learnt in their own countries. This paper, part of a larger study, aims to provide insights into the reading practices of Indian/Bangladeshi postgraduate students…

English as a Foreign Language (EFL) freshman students at the College of Languages and Translation received direct instruction in adjective-forming suffixes, then they took an immediate and a delayed test. Error analysis showed that 36% of the responses were left blank or the subjects duplicated the stimulus word. In 32% they mismatched the word…

This study provides data from an existing review of secondary data and a survey of dual enrollment managers on the topic of Mississippi community and junior colleges' dual enrollment collaborations with secondary schools and parents of home-schooled students. Dual enrollment, also known as dual credit, concurrent enrollment, and credit based…

This paper presents a goal-based scenario approach to teaching introductory database concepts to undergraduates using two different scaffolding methods. One method, termed "worked-out examples," attempts to reduce extraneous cognitive load by requiring students to complete increasingly complex missing parts of worked out examples. The other…

One of the key factors for the success of development strategies in rural areas is the setting up of appropriate governance patterns, whose main outcome is a fluid communication between public and private organisations and an effective integration of objectives and policies. Through a "post-rural" approach, this paper aims to analyse an…

This study examined initial evidence of changes in fit to a unidimensional model for some language tests at multiple ability levels. Seven data sets were analyzed using the first phase of exploratory factor analysis: principal component eigenvalue extraction. Each data set is analyzed at varying n-sizes: whole group; random subsample; and five…