Children in first, second, and third grades were subjects in a study that investigated how well they drew inferences after reading their own dictated stories, peer-dictated stories, and adult-written stories. Results showed they inferred better if they dictated the story themselves or if they were accurate decoders. (HOD)

Explores the role of interpersonal cognitive complexity in the character impressions, story comprehension, response preferences, and literary attitudes of eleventh grade students. Results suggest that interpersonal cognitive complexity predisposes readers toward complex perceptions of literary characters. (HOD)

The consequences of large state testing are often uniformity of expectations for achievement. The largest impact of higher standards, then, are realized by traditionally disenfranchised student populations, particularly the least affluent who are most likely to bear the yoke of low expectation. This paper advances S. Messick's (1981) fundamental…

Discusses use of two central forms of argument, analogy and inference to the best explanation, in teaching college science. It is argued that science makes sense if the underlying reasoning makes sense, and this must be explicitly addressed in instruction. Therefore, forms of argument that link evidence to hypotheses or theories, and criteria for…

Three studies used interspecies adoption stories to examine children's understanding of the role of birth in determining animal properties and species identity. Found that most 4- to 7-year olds could reliably judge that babies would be of the same species as birth parents, but were unable to attribute properties of adoptive parents. (Author/KB)

Discussion of the integration of school library media programs into the curriculum highlights comprehension and inference generation as links between human information processing and subject area methodology. Long-term and short-term memory are discussed, and instruction in inference using narrative fiction is explained. (15 references) (LRW)

Describes a study which examined classroom discussions of content area readings and attempted to modify the discussions to reflect more higher-order thinking and critical reading. Finds that teachers did elicit more inferential responses, even though they did not effect substantial and lasting changes in classroom interaction patterns. (RS)

Experiments involving a componential approach to analogy training were conducted with 36 fourth, 34 eighth, and 96 tenth graders. Results indicate a significant positive effect on all students' verbal analogy skills and no significant effect on fourth graders' inferential skills. In-class training and reading/language arts instruction implications…

The focus here is on the students' uses for numbers in both school and home settings. The included activities emphasize a growth and development theme involving various aspects of data collection, data interpretation, probability, and statistics. Also included are parent-child extended activity worksheets. (JJK)

Describes a performance-based assessment approach utilizing science activities and questions to assess different levels of thinking. Objectives, materials, and procedures are provided for the assessment of student skills in classification, observation and inference, interpretation, and analysis. (PR)

A proposed model for the validity of measures of professional competence treats validation as the evaluation of inferences drawn from test scores, focusing on evaluation, generalization, and extrapolation. The model is used to indicate strengths and weaknesses of assessments of professional competence: observations of performance, simulations, and…

Variance formulas of H. E. Daniels and M. G. Kendall (1947) are generalized to allow for the presence of ties and variance of the sample tau correlation. Applications of these generalized formulas are discussed and illustrated using data from a 1965 study of contraceptive use in 15 developing countries. (SLD)

Thirty-seven second, 41 fourth, and 46 sixth graders were tested on low-level subcomponents of reading efficiency and high-level text comprehension to assess the relationship between the two parameters. High-level comprehension does not depend on efficiency of lexical access processes, but verbal memory span is important in high-level…

Discusses five common myths about statistical significance testing (SST), the possible erroneous and harmful contributions of SST to educational research, and suggested alternatives to SST for mathematics education research. (Contains 61 references.) (MKR)

This article reports on an introspective study that examined the effect of EFL learners' L2 reading proficiency on their L2 lexical inferencing while reading an English expository text. The knowledge sources and contextual cues they used in the process, the level of success they achieved, and their rate of learning and retention of the inferred…