The Prudhoe Cognitive Function Test (PCFT) directly measures the cognitive abilities of people with intellectual impairment. This study examined the relationship between this instrument and the Kaufman Brief Intelligence Test (K-BIT) and two shorter versions of the same scale. High correlations between the verbal and performance sections of the…

Domain-specific systems are hypothetically specialized with respect to the outputs they compute and the inputs they allow (Fodor, 1983). Here, we examine whether these 2 conditions for specialization are dissociable. An initial experiment suggests that English speakers could extend a putatively universal phonological restriction to inputs…

With an increasing number of studies evincing the effectiveness of simulation-based virtual laboratories (VLs), researchers have discussed replacing traditional laboratories. However, the approach of doing science endorsed by VLs has not been carefully examined. A survey of 233 online VLs revealed that hypothetico-deductive (HD) logic prevails in…

This article discusses the concept of an invariant item ordering (IIO) for polytomously scored items and proposes methods for investigating an IIO in real test data. Method manifest IIO is proposed for assessing whether item response functions intersect. Coefficient H[superscript T] is defined for polytomously scored items. Given that an IIO…

Purpose: Confusions between voiced and voiceless plosives and voiced and voiceless fricatives are common in Dutch tracheoesophageal (TE) speech. This study investigates (a) which acoustic measures are found to convey a correct voicing contrast in TE speech and (b) whether different measures are found in TE speech than in normal laryngeal (NL)…

Purpose: To investigate the usefulness of 3 tasks known to be effective diagnostic clinical markers of specific language impairment (SLI) in children: (a) nonword repetition, (b) sentence repetition, and (c) grammaticality judgments of finiteness marking. Method: Two groups of young adults, 13 with SLI and 18 with typical language, completed 3…

Establishing appropriate relations between the basic and applied areas of behavior analysis has been of long and persistent interest to the author. In this article, the author illustrates that there is a direct relation between how hard an organism will work for access to an object or activity, as indexed by the largest ratio completed under a…

In a previous study we found that students receiving feedback from multiple peers improve their writing quality more than students receiving feedback from a single expert. The present study attempted to explain that finding by analyzing the feedback types provided by experts and peers, how that feedback was related to revisions, and how revisions…

A general theory on the use of correlation weights in linear prediction has yet to be proposed. In this paper we take initial steps in developing such a theory by describing the conditions under which correlation weights perform well in population regression models. Using OLS weights as a comparison, we define cases in which the two weighting…

This paper reports on a study of interactive dynamic assessment undertaken by children learning English listening and speaking as a Foreign Language in a kindergarten. It investigates how an interactive dynamic assessment could be designed to assess young English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) learners, what information such an interactive dynamic…

At near-threshold levels of stimulation, identical stimulus parameters can result in very different phenomenal experiences. Can we manipulate which stimuli reach consciousness? Here we show that consciousness of otherwise masked stimuli can be experimentally induced by sensory entrainment. We preceded a backward-masked stimulus with a series of…

Members in the prevention and treatment fields continue to examine how to most effectively assess and label high volume alcohol consumption. Terms such as "binge" drinking have resulted in considerable controversy and debate. Conventionally the criteria for assessing high-risk drinking includes: five or more drinks for men and four or more drinks…

The measurement of the mass, or the density, of air can easily be done with very simple materials and offers many interesting phenomena for discussion--buoyancy and its effects being the most obvious but not the only one. Many interesting considerations can be done regarding the behavior of gases, the effect of the external conditions in the…

Five experiments were conducted to investigate infants' ability to transfer actions learned via imitation to new objects and to examine what components of the original context are critical to such transfer. Infants of 15 months observed an experimenter perform an action with one or two toys and then were offered a novel toy that was not…

Standardized tests have been selected as a key assessment factor in expanding the academic achievement of the national student population. However, these tests position immigrant students at the risk of academic failure, leading education experts to search for new strategies and teaching models. The "Handbook of Research on Assessment…