This study investigated the effects of a scaffolded-language intervention using cloze procedures, semantically contingent expansions, contrastive word pairs, and direct models on speech abilities in two preschoolers with speech and language impairment speaking African American English. Effects of the lexical and phonological characteristics (i.e.,…

In a common-item (anchor) equating design, the common items should be evaluated for item parameter drift. Drifted items are often removed. For a test that contains mostly dichotomous items and only a small number of polytomous items, removing some drifted polytomous anchor items may result in anchor sets that no longer resemble mini-versions of…

A widely held assumption in metamemory is that better, more accurate metamemory monitoring leads to better, more efficacious restudy decisions, reflected in better memory performance--we refer to this causal chain as the "restudy selectivity hypothesis". In 3 sets of experiments, we tested this hypothesis by factorially manipulating…

Lay theories about the tell tale signs of deception include numerous nonverbal cues; empirically, however, a focus on message content results in better lie detection than a focus on nonverbal elements. Feelings-as-information theory (Schwarz, 1990, 2012) predicts that systematic processing of message content is more likely under sad than happy…

Three-dimensional (3D) or volumetric visualization is a useful resource for learning about the anatomy of the human brain. However, the effectiveness of 3D spatial visualization has not yet been assessed systematically. This report analyzes whether 3D volumetric visualization helps learners to identify and locate subcortical structures more…

The fear of embarrassment in middle- and high-school students often inhibits their attempts at drawing realistically. Many find it difficult to reproduce what they see accurately, and as a result, complain, act out or refuse to do the task in order to save face. In this article, the author describes a lesson that does three things: (1) it attempts…

The DIF-free-then-DIF (DFTD) strategy consists of two steps: (a) select a set of items that are the most likely to be DIF-free and (b) assess the other items for DIF (differential item functioning) using the designated items as anchors. The rank-based method together with the computer software IRTLRDIF can select a set of DIF-free polytomous items…

Objective: Research on children's risk of injury reveals that parent and child factors are often interrelated. This study examined relations between children's risk taking, parent appraisal of this risk taking, and children's rate of injury in youth 8 and 9 years old. Methods: Responses to questionnaires and laboratory tasks were used to examine…

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are faced with many challenging behaviors that could impede their learning. One commonly reported problem behavior is noncompliance, which is often defined as a delay in response (latency), decrease in rate of responding (fluency), or failure to complete a task. This failure to comply in an appropriate…

Starting from an explicit scoring rule for time limit tasks incorporating both response time and accuracy, and a definite trade-off between speed and accuracy, a response model is derived. Since the scoring rule is interpreted as a sufficient statistic, the model belongs to the exponential family. The various marginal and conditional distributions…

An intervention was introduced for truck loaders that used wireless vehicle mount computers that included auditory, visual feedback, and immediate data delivery. The implementation reliably reduced pallets from being loaded out of sequence for all outbound trucks in multistop routes. The role of the organizational behavior management (OBM)…

Purpose: The authors examined the influence of demographic variables on nonmainstream American English (NMAE) use; the differences between NMAE speakers and mainstream American English (MAE) speakers on measures of metalinguistics, single-word reading, and a new measure of morphophonology; and the differences between the 2 groups in the…

Talker variability in speech influences language processing from infancy through adulthood and is inextricably embedded in the very cues that identify speech sounds. Yet little is known about developmental changes in the processing of talker information. On one account, children have not yet learned to separate speech sound variability from…

Purpose: In this study, the authors examined the comprehension of sentences with predicates and reflexives that are linked to a nonadjacent noun as a test of the hierarchical ordering deficit (HOD) hypothesis. That hypothesis and more modern versions posit that children with specific language impairment (SLI) have difficulty in establishing…

Although most psychological assessments are based on measures related to an individual's average level of performance, it has been proposed that measures of variability around one's average may provide unique individual difference information and have clinical significance. The current study investigated properties of within-person variability in…