A study examined whether composition specialists can counterbalance the potential privileging of the assessment perspective, or of self-appointed interpreters of that perspective, through the study of assessment discourse as text. Fourteen assessment texts were examined, most of them journal articles and most of them featuring the common…

Psychologists know that reasoning human beings do not spontaneously follow the rules of formal logic when using implication. Addressing this phenomenon, Piaget employed the concept of "significant implication," which exists when the meaning of a subsequent proposition is "included" in the meaning of an earlier one, and is not…

A discussion of the application of artificial intelligence to natural language processing looks at several problems in language comprehension, involving semantic ambiguity, anaphoric reference, and metonymy. Examples of these problems are cited, and the importance of the computational approach in analyzing them is explained. The approach applies…

A series of studies was conducted to determine whether children's reasoning is capacity-limited and whether any such capacity, if it exists, is based on the working memory system. An N-term series (transitive inference) was used as the primary task in an interference paradigm. A concurrent short-term memory load was employed as the secondary task.…

Evaluates arguments concerning the generality and statistical analysis of single-subject data. Considers the role of philosophy of science in evaluating research methodology. Single-subject data have special relevance for psychologists and educators who focus on the individual but statistical techniques for analyzing data have numerous…

Describes a procedure called Generating Reciprocal Inferences Procedure (GRIP), which teaches inferential comprehension using direct or explicit instruction, a generative process, and reciprocal questioning. (RS)

Demonstrates the consequences on total misdiagnosis rates of using conventional (fixed) rather than flexible (Bayesian) rules when using the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory in diagnosis. Concludes that the range of base rates and the separation of distributions of normal and abnormal scores affect the difference in the misdiagnosis…

Maintains that metaphors may be used to help secondary students understand the figurative language often encountered in social studies. Shows how labels were attached to real dominos which were then tipped over to explain the "domino effect," a theory often referred to in foreign affairs. This experience was related to "event chains" which were…

This article reviews literature on kinetic structure, a low-inference variable related to lesson organization. Kinetic structure significantly affects student achievement and student perception of lesson effectiveness. Training programs to increase kinetic structure and other results concerning structure are discussed. (Author/MT)

Methods by which structural models correct for the effects of attenuation due to measurement error are reviewed, and implications of such disattenuation for interpreting the results of structural equation models are considered. Recommendations are made for improving the practice of disattenuation, and caution is urged in drawing inferences based…

Solving the school dropout problem requires accurate data about the actual rates and counts for all student groups residing in the community. This article discusses ways to improve demographic accounting accuracy. Reporting only dropout rates diverts attention from dropout counts and increases the likelihood of making incorrect demographic…

Investigates effects of prior knowledge on learning from high- and low-coherence history texts. Examines participants' comprehension in two experiments. Finds high-knowledge readers performed better on open-ended questions after reading low-coherence text. Indicates that low-coherence text requires more inference processes--these inferences are…

Investigated young children's ability to use narrative contexts to infer the meanings of novel vocabulary terms. Two groups of 15 7-and 8-year-olds participated; children with normally developing reading comprehension skills and children with weak reading comprehension skill. Results are discussed. (Author/VWL)

Summarizes Tarski's semantic truth theory to clarify different aspects of implication. Extends the classical definition of implication as a relationship between propositions to a relationship between open sentences with at least one free variable. Analyzes two problematic situations and the presentation of some experimental results from research…

A theory of acquired similarity and knowledge representation, latent semantic analysis (LSA), is presented to explain how people know as much as they do with the little information they get. LSA suggests that some domains of knowledge contain vast numbers of weak intercorrelations that amplify learning by inference. (SLD)