Children with dyslexia are believed to have very poor phonological skills for which they compensate, to some extent, through relatively well-developed knowledge of letter patterns. We tested this view in Study 1 by comparing 25 dyslexic children and 25 younger normal children, chosen so that both groups performed, on average, at a second-grade…

Recent studies have shown that restricting review and answer change opportunities on computerized adaptive tests (CATs) to items within successive blocks reduces time spent in review, satisfies most examinees' desires for review, and controls against distortion in proficiency estimates resulting from intentional incorrect answering of items prior…

The perceptions of a group of 5-6-year olds were tested against two disparate hypotheses, one for nested hierarchies, the other for symbolic representations in language and learning. There is evidence that young children have the foundation for tackling more sophisticated and challenging ideas than is usually recognised. Linguistically, children…

The study examines the interests and attitudes of school students toward biology: through their interest in out-of-school activities and their attitude towards lessons as measured by interest, importance and difficulty. Biology lessons were relatively popular with the greatest preference found among students learning zoology. Girls showed…

The role of explicit and implicit acquisition of grammatical rules in second language learning was examined by assessing high school students performance after several years of study on the correct use of the Spanish verbs "ser" and "estar". These two verbs are essentially equivalent in use to the English verb "to be," but there is a complex set…

Family and consumer sciences programs in higher education operate in a dynamic environment of self-evaluation. One common component of the process is the evaluation of teaching effectiveness. This study reviewed some of the critical perspectives on student surveys of teaching effectiveness and then tested a portion of that dialogue by…

Three interactive tasks, increasing in the complexity of resource-directing reasoning demands on speaker/storyteller attribution of, and linguistic reference to, the thoughts and intentions of characters in narrative stimuli were performed by Japanese L1 speakers of English. Largely consistent with the claims of the Cognition Hypothesis, results…

"The Critical Word Factor," based on word recognition demands of texts, is a measure of text difficulty designed specifically for texts used by beginning readers. The measure is a function of the number of new, unique words per 100 running words of text that fall outside a designated curriculum. The authors investigated the validity of the…

The purpose of this study was to develop and gather validity evidence for silent reading fluency passages. A number of passages were written following a traditional story grammar structure (character, setting, events) and placed on a computer for students to read silently. We describe in detail, the manner in which content-related evidence was…

The purpose of this study was to document the instrument development of maze measures for grades 3-8. Each maze passage contained twelve omitted words that students filled in by choosing the best-fit word from among the provided options. In this technical report, we describe the process of creating, reviewing, and pilot testing the maze measures.…

In today's knowledge economy, technology is utilized more than ever to deliver instructional material to the learner. Nonetheless, information may not always be presented in a manner that maximizes the learning experience, resulting in a negative impact on learning outcomes. Drawing on the Task-Technology Fit model, a research framework 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…

It is a widely held belief that anchor tests should be miniature versions (i.e., minitests), with respect to content and statistical characteristics of the tests being equated. This paper examines the foundations for this belief. It examines the requirement of statistical representativeness of anchor tests that are content representative. The…

Computerized adaptive tests (CATs) are individualized tests that, from a measurement point of view, are optimal for each individual, possibly under some practical conditions. In the present study, it is shown that maximum information item selection in CATs using an item bank that is calibrated with the one- or the two-parameter logistic model…

Less is known about the effects of normal aging on speech output than other motor actions, because studies of communication integrity have focused on voice production and linguistic parameters rather than speech production characteristics. Studies investigating speech production in older adults have reported increased syllable duration (Slawinski,…