In response to Howe (2009), the author argues that educational research needs multiple thoughtful perspectives. The author's standpoint is that of a mixed methods research methodologist. Mixed methods research provides an antidualistic and syncretic philosophy and set of approaches or possibilities for merging insights from diverse perspectives;…

Many drugs of abuse produce changes in impulsive choice, that is, choice for a smaller-sooner reinforcer over a larger-later reinforcer. Because the alternatives differ in both delay and amount, it is not clear whether these drug effects are due to the differences in reinforcer delay or amount. To isolate the effects of delay, we used a titrating…

Association models constitute an attractive alternative to the usual log-linear models for modeling the dependence between classification variables. They impose special structure on the underlying association by assigning scores on the levels of each classification variable, which can be fixed or parametric. Under the general row-column (RC)…

In everyday word learning words are only sometimes heard in the presence of their referent, making the acquisition of novel words a particularly challenging task. The current study investigated whether children (18-month-olds who are novice word learners) can track the statistics of co-occurrence between words and objects to learn novel mappings…

This is a critical review of surveys conducted on the American deaf population since 1990. There is no agreement among the surveys on the number of deaf and hard of hearing individuals in the US. This behooves us to study the question: Why the lack of agreement in estimates and prevalence rates of the American general deaf and the deaf child…

Gaissmaier and Schooler (2008) [Gaissmaier, W., & Schooler, L. J. (2008). "The smart potential behind probability matching." "Cognition, 109," 416-422] argue that probability matching, which has traditionally been viewed as a decision making error, may instead reflect an adaptive response to environments in which outcomes potentially follow…

While the importance of attending early learning programmes is increasingly evident, the provision of early learning programmes in developing countries has not grown in parallel. In this paper we examine how attendance in early learning programmes for children aged 3-6 years, the recommended period, differs within and across 52 developing…

This paper addresses two problems relating to the interpretability of the model parameters in the three parameter logistic model. First, it is shown that if the values of the discrimination parameters are all the same, the remaining parameters are nonidentifiable in a nontrivial way that involves not only ability and item difficulty, but also the…

In this article, the author describes the format of the Con Test, an Australian television game show which followed the same general rules and game play as the UK show PokerFace. At the end of each round a contestant needs to decide whether or not he or she should fold. A contestant needs to know how likely it is that he or she is in last place.…

A simple way is given to create residual plots that are words or pictures. Three illustrative examples are presented.

The authors provide a historical overview of the development of contemporary theories of counseling and psychology in relation to determinism, probabilistic causality, indeterminate free will, and moral and legal responsibility. They propose a unique model of behavioral causality that incorporates a theory of indeterminate free will, a concept…

The impact of increased academic intensity on transfer rates from community colleges to 4-year institutions has been estimated only from observational data, with the possibility of selection bias. This study uses matching estimators to overcome possible selection bias and estimate the causal impact of increased academic intensity on transfer…

The author describes an activity where prospective mathematics teachers made hypotheses about the dimensions of a fair cylindrical die and conducted experiments with different cylinders. He also provides a model that estimates the probability that a cylinder would land on the lateral surface, depending on the height and diameter of the cylinder.…

We studied the role of the frontal lobes in orienting spatial attention and inhibiting attentional capture by goal-irrelevant stimuli, using a spatial cueing method in patients with frontotemporal dementia (FTD). Two blocks of trials were presented, one with non-predictive cues and the other with counter-predictive cues. FTD patients showed a…

Historically, biology has not been a heavily quantitative science, but this is changing rapidly (Ewing 2002; Gross 2000; Hastings and palmer 2003; Jungck 2005; Steen 2005). Quantitative approaches now constitute a key tool for modern biologists, yet undergraduate biology courses remain largely qualitative and descriptive. Although biology majors…