Young children tend to expect that 2 members of the same category will share properties, yet they frequently deny that an individual's properties will remain stable across time and context. Two experiments, involving 72 four- to five-year-olds, 72 seven- to eight-year-olds, and 76 undergraduates, explored the factors that lead children to…

Previous studies have demonstrated that analogies can promote student learning in physics and can be productively taught to students to support their learning, under certain conditions. We build on these studies to explore the use of analogy by students in a large introductory college physics course. In the first large-scale study of its kind, we…

It is a common practice in item response theory (IRT) to treat estimates of item parameters, say "B" circumflex, as if they were the known, true quantities, "B." However, ignoring the uncertainty associated with item parameters can lead to biases and over-confidence in subsequent inferences such as ability estimation,…

Four experiments studied 4- to 6-year-old children's understanding of inferential reasoning as a source of knowledge. To assess understanding that knowledge of relevant premises leads to knowledge of the conclusion, children had to judge the knowledge of another person, who was presented to the child as being aware of two premises. (Author/BN)

According to Matthew Lipman, director of the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children, philosophy is the best answer to the call for critical thinking because it provides experience in reasoning that will prepare children much better than the limited knowledge of the disciplines. (TE)

Describes and compares eight methods of estimating the parameters of the Zipf distribution. (CLB)

This paper asserts that causality is an intriguing but controversial topic in philosophy, statistics, and educational and psychological research. By supporting the Causal Markov Condition and the faithfulness condition, Clark Glymour attempted to draw causal inferences from structural equation modeling. According to Glymour, in order to make…

In educational assessment, what students say, do, and sometimes make is observed, and assessors attempt to infer what students know, can do, or have accomplished more generally. Some links in the chain of inference depend on statistical models and probability-based reasoning, and it is with these links that terms such as validity, reliability, and…

Regression artifacts are a source of mistaken causal inference in inferences based on time-series data and from longitudinal studies. These artifacts are illustrated, and it is noted that their magnitude is computable (and distinguishable from genuine effects) if the autocorrelation patterns for various lags is known. (SLD)

Differential item functioning (DIF) assessment procedures for items with more than two ordered score categories, referred to as polytomous items, were evaluated. Three descriptive statistics (standardized mean difference and two procedures based on the SIBTEST computer program) and five inferential procedures were used. Conditions under which the…

Derived a confidence interval for a ratio of correlated mean absolute deviations. Simulation results show that it performs well in small sample sizes across realistically nonnormal distributions and that it is almost as powerful as the most powerful test examined by R. Wilcox (1990). (SLD)

Explores posterior analysis in estimating factor score in a confirmatory factor analysis model with polytomous, censored or truncated data, and studies the accuracy of Bayesian estimates through simulation. Results support these Bayesian estimates for statistical inference. (SLD)

Presents a model of information retrieval based on plausible inference which suggests that techniques should be found for combining multiple search strategies into an overall assessment of a document's relevance. The results of experiments designed to test this approach using a simple spreading activation search are discussed. (21 references) (CLB)

Two experiments demonstrated that by the age of four years, children can use the difference between an object's initial and final state to work out what happens to an object when it changes. In contrast, three-year-old children have difficulty in using the difference between initial and final states to make a causal inference. (RH)

Describes class activities designed to teach inference skill using combined lists. (RS)