Second and third graders and fifth and sixth graders were tested in a very large, unfamiliar environment to determine the relation of their knowledge of an abstract reference frame to performance on a spatial inference task. (HOD)

Describes three experiments that examined how children (4- to 11-year-olds) use their knowledge of the attributes of living things to infer whether particular objects are alive. (HOD)

Describes 10 categories of inferences and proposes a three-step procedure for teaching students to make inferences while reading. (HOD)

The Bayesian inferential process is modified for use in an aggregate meta-analytic evaluation. Compared with the average effect size meta-analytic approach, the Bayesian approach was more sensitive, more consistent and more powerful. This approach is recommended when primary data are not available and when all evaluations involve comparisons of…

The purpose of this report is to present and discuss competing accountability approaches, or models, designed to systematically indicate how a school's students are performing academically. Within the framework of the current federally mandated accountability legislation, increased interest in models measuring school performance has caused…

An on-going study is examining a method proposed by S. Goetz and D. Debertin for estimating demand for educational attainment at the county level by using secondary data. The method produces compact information showing the relationship between employment, occupation, and educational attainment, information not available at the county level. The…

This collection of activities is designed to show how graphing calculators can be used to explore statistics. The activities address such topics as data representation, distributions, and statistical tests. Teaching notes and calculator instructions are included as are blackline masters. (MM)

This study used the "double easy-to-hard" paradigm to examine the hypothesis that the class inclusion (CI) task should be equivalent in relational complexity to the transitive inference (TI) problem. Participating in the study were 64 girls and 50 boys, with a mean age of 8 years, 6 months. Stimuli for easy versions of the tasks were…

Examines three complete basal reading programs to determine how frequently logically necessary relationships are expressed in the text and whether direct instruction in making logically necessary inferences accompanies such expressions in basals. Finds that, although basals offer a natural context in which logical understanding may be constructed,…

Discusses and compares the meaning of epistemic uses of modals. Demonstrates that the relation between them is not as simple as has been frequently suggested. The article bases its observations on the data from a corpus of parallel French and English texts, pointing out that such a corpus can open new avenues for investigation of an old topic. (18…

This paper argues that statistical inference practices in both educational and psychological research should be directed away from traditional significance tests in favor of Bayesian inferential methods. Regular use of exploratory data analytic methods is recommended in conjunction with computer intensive resampling methods. Approaches to…

Three experiments examined strategies for solving suppositional deductions to compare control structures proposed by rule theory and model theory. Puzzles were based on assertors who may be truth-tellers and their assertions about their truth-telling status. Reasoners made backward and forward inferences, found generating suppositions difficult,…

Examines the theoretical category in discourse analysis called "inferrable information" and challenges the implicit assumptions that lead Prince (1981) to distinguish between inferrable and invoked information. Four marked syntactic constructions in Farsi and English are examined that have previously been shown to be relevant to…

Describes a technique for statistically comparing bibliometric models and illustrates its use with two examples using Lotka's hypothesis of author productivity and one example using library circulation frequencies. Topics discussed include nested statistical models, analysis of variance, regression, log-linear models, and the likelihood ratio…

Theories--based on concretizing, assimilation, and structuring--of the use of metaphors in learning are assessed. Each is shown to predict different patterns of inferences and errors in problem solving. An experiment with 43 undergraduates involving college lectures indicated that structuring may provide the most important function of metaphors in…