Speakers are faster and more accurate at processing certain sound sequences within their language. Does this reflect the fact that these sequences are frequent or that they are phonetically less complex (e.g., easier to articulate)? It has been difficult to contrast these two factors given their high correlation in natural languages. In this…

Current estimates of the societal costs of alcoholism do not consider the impact of parental drinking on children. This paper analyzes the consequences of parental problem-drinking on children's labor market outcomes in adulthood. Using the NLSY79, I show that having a problem-drinking parent is associated with longer periods out of the labor…

The goal of this study is to investigate the relationship between the preferred learning styles of professional pharmacy students and their performance/success in a hybrid PharmD pharmacy program making extensive use of online content. Consequently, the study will look for early detection factors which can impact the performance of the student…

The Meyerhoff Scholarship Program, which celebrated its 20th year in 2008, is considered a successful intervention program for increasing the number of underrepresented minorities who earn Ph.D.s or M.D./Ph.D.s and pursue research careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). This article examines the relationship between…

Differential item functioning (DIF) analysis is a statistical technique used for ensuring the equity and fairness of educational assessments. This study formulates a new DIF analysis method using the information similarity index (ISI). ISI compares item information functions when data fits the Rasch model. Through simulations and an international…

The authors examined internal representations of conditional strategies for a situation of object conflict in 849 adolescents and young adults between the ages of 11 and 19 years. To examine participants' expectations of strategy use, the authors developed questionnaires that depicted a variety of contexts in which 2 people wanted an object that…

Word-level reading and spelling skills support reading comprehension and writing composition. Accurate and fluent word-level reading and spelling are facilitated when individuals have clear mental orthographic representations (MOR) that permit them to quickly recognize and recall the visual representation of a word, freeing up memory and…

The authors identify 2 major types of statistical data from which semantic representations can be learned. These are denoted as "experiential data" and "distributional data". Experiential data are derived by way of experience with the physical world and comprise the sensory-motor data obtained through sense receptors. Distributional data, by…

In this study, students' conceptual difficulties about some basic concepts in quantum mechanics like one-dimensional potential well problems and probability density of tunneling particles were identified. For this aim, a multiple choice instrument named Quantum Mechanics Conceptual Test has been developed by one of the researchers of this study…

Verbal and visuospatial abilities are typically subserved by different cerebral hemispheres: the left hemisphere for the former and the right hemisphere for the latter. However little is known of the origin of this division of function. Causal theories propose that functional asymmetry is an obligatory pattern of organisation, while statistical…

This article examines student departure from university, based on data from a survey of undergraduate university students in Norway conducted in 2005. The survey maps students' progression through higher education, and the analysis focuses on the different types of departure and their causes. More than 50% of all university students left the…

Diagnostic assessment is currently an active research area in educational measurement. Literature related to diagnostic modeling has been in existence for several decades, but a great deal of research has been conducted within the last decade or so, especially within the last five years. The author summarizes the key components in the application…

An economy with a finite number of agents and a finite number of states is considered. An exogenous institutional rule prescribes which moves from one state to another are feasible to each coalition. At each time, an agent is called to act with some exogenous probability, and he chooses a coalition, a feasible new state to move the economy to, and…

This article shows how consideration of seating arrangements in theatres can be used as a basis for constructing an interesting probability model.

A lottery coincidence provides the background for discussing the assessment of probabilities and the definition of events.