We evaluate the impact of Florida's test-based promotion policy on the probability that low-performing students are retained using data on the universe of third-grade students in the state of Florida from 2001 to 2004. We also examine the effect of formal exemptions to the policy on student proficiency in reading two years later. In an evaluation…

Just as organizations use strategic planning to prepare for the future, individuals and the organization can benefit from personal strategic plans that consider future pathways within the organization as part of those plans. This research proposes a three-step approach to creating personal strategic plans that incorporates personal research,…

Two experiments with pigeons investigated the effects of contingencies between interresponse times (IRTs) and the transitions between the components of 2- and 4-component chained schedules (Experiments 1 and 2, respectively). The probability of component transitions varied directly with the most recent (Lag 0) IRT in some experimental conditions…

As women have entered the work force and occupational sex segregation has declined, workers experience increased contact with the opposite sex on the job. The sex mix a worker encounters on the job should affect the cost of search for alternative mates and therefore the probability of divorce. This paper uses 1990 Census data to calculate the sex…

The cerebral hemispheres have been shown to be differentially sensitive to sentence-level information; in particular, it has been suggested that only the left hemisphere (LH) makes predictions about upcoming items, whereas the right (RH) processes words in a more integrative fashion. The current study used event-related potentials to jointly…

A connectionist model of causal attribution is presented, emphasizing the use of domain-general principles of processing and learning previously employed in models of semantic cognition. The model categorizes objects dependent upon their observed 'causal properties' and is capable of making several types of inferences that 4-year-old children have…

The authors study conflict on multiple fronts. A defending player needs to successfully defend all fronts, and an attacker needs to win at only one. Multiple fronts result in a considerable disadvantage for the defending player, and even if there is a defense advantage at each of them, the payoff of the defending player is zero if the number of…

Log-multiplicative association (LMA) models, which are special cases of log-linear models, have interpretations in terms of latent continuous variables. Two theoretical derivations of LMA models based on item response theory (IRT) arguments are presented. First, we show that Anderson and colleagues (Anderson & Vermunt, 2000; Anderson & Bockenholt,…

In the paper we present a simple game that students can play in the classroom. The game can be used to show that random variables can behave in an unexpected way: the expected mean can tend to zero or to infinity; the variance can tend to zero or to infinity. The game can also be used to introduce the lognormal distribution. (Contains 1 table and…

In their comment on the tolerance-noise covariation (TNC) method for decomposing variability by H. Muller and D. Sternad (2003, 2004b), J. B. J. Smeets and S. Louw show that covariation (C), as defined within the TNC method, is not invariant with respect to coordinate transformations and contend that it is, therefore, meaningless. Although the…

The authors examined whether participants can shift their criterion for recognition decisions in response to the probability that an item was previously studied. Participants in 3 experiments were given recognition tests in which the probability that an item was studied was correlated with its location during the test. Results from all 3…

This study examined the substance use and delinquency outcomes for the nearest age siblings of substance abusing and delinquent adolescents that participated in a randomized clinical trial evaluating the effectiveness of integrating evidence-based practices into juvenile drug court. The sample of 70 siblings averaged 14.4 years of age, 50% were…

The chaos theory of careers emphasizes both stability and change in its account of career development. This article outlines counseling strategies derived from this emphasis in terms of convergent or probability thinking and emergent or possibility thinking. These 2 perspectives are characterized, and practical counseling strategy implications are…

Radical behaviorism considers private events to be a part of ongoing observable behavior and to share the properties of public events. Although private events cannot be measured directly, their roles in overt action can be inferred from mathematical models that relate private responses to external stimuli and reinforcers according to the same…

Recently, high-probability request sequences has shown promise as a method to enhance student compliance using positive methods without sacrificing the quality of the assignment. High-probability request sequences use a series of preferred behaviors to increase the likelihood that nonpreferred behaviors will occur. For this intervention, a series…