This article examines the "integrated conception of competence" as conceived by Paul Hager and David Beckett and suggests that its characterization in terms intended to distance it from behaviouristic and reductionist notions of competence is not sufficient to differentiate it from other models. Taking up Hager and Beckett's idea that…

Young children spend a large portion of their time pretending about non-real situations. Why? We answer this question by using the framework of Bayesian causal models to argue that pretending and counterfactual reasoning engage the same component cognitive abilities: disengaging with current reality, making inferences about an alternative…

The ability to imagine objects undergoing rotation (mental rotation) improves markedly with practice, but an explanation of this plasticity remains controversial. Some researchers propose that practice speeds up the rate of a general-purpose rotation algorithm. Others maintain that performance improvements arise through the adoption of a new…

One of the most consistent findings in developmental criminology is the "age-crime curve"--the observation that criminal behavior increases in adolescence and decreases in adulthood. Recently, Brown and Males (Justice Policy J 8:1-30, 2011) conducted an analysis of aggregate arrest, poverty, and population data from California and…

Given the long history of effect size (ES) indices (Olejnik and Algina, "Contemporary Educational Psychology," 25, 241-286 2000) and various attempts by APA and AERA to encourage the reporting and interpretation of ES to supplement findings from inferential statistical analyses, it is essential to document the impact of APA and AERA standards on…

There is more to understanding the concept of mean than simply knowing and applying the add-them-up and divide algorithm. In the following, we discuss a component of understanding the mean--inference from a fixed total--that has been largely ignored by researchers studying students understanding of mean. We add this component to the list of types…

The goal of this chapter is to recommend quality criteria to guide evaluators' selections of sampling designs when mixing approaches. First, we contextualize our discussion of quality criteria and sampling designs by discussing the concept of interpretive consistency and how it impacts sampling decisions. Embedded in this discussion are…

Children rely on both evidence and prior knowledge to make physical causal inferences; this study explores whether they make attributions about others' behavior in the same manner. A total of one hundred and fifty-nine 4- and 6-year-olds saw 2 dolls interacting with 2 activities, and explained the dolls' actions. In the person condition, each doll…

Semantic studies on diagrammatic notations (Barwise & Etchemendy,; Shimojima,; Stenning & Lemon, ) have revealed that the "non-deductive," "emergent," or "perceptual" effects of diagrams (Chandrasekaran, Kurup, Banerjee, Josephson, & Winkler,; Kulpa,; Larkin & Simon,; Lindsay, ) are all rooted in the…

A landmark study by O'Neill (1996), in which 2-year-old children were found to be more likely to point toward a hidden object to help an adult who was unsighted during the hiding event than to point helpfully for an adult who had been sighted, seems to undermine the conventional assumption that children this young do not understand the…

Among the many factors that influence the efficacy of feedback on learning, the information contained in the feedback message is arguably the most important. One common assumption is that there is a benefit to increasing the complexity of the feedback message beyond providing the correct answer. Surprisingly, studies that have manipulated the…

Cohesive elements of texts such as connectives (e.g., "but," "in contrast") are expected to facilitate inferential comprehension in poor readers. Two experiments tested this prediction in poor readers with intellectual disability (ID) by: (a) comparing literal and inferential text comprehension of texts with and without connectives and/or high…

Spurred by recent writings regarding statistical pragmatism, we propose a simple, practical approach to introducing students to a new style of statistical thinking that models nature through the lens of data-generating processes, not populations. (Contains 5 figures.)

Given the importance of explanation in science texts for children, this research explored Coh-Metrix as a tool for rapidly determining the presence of explanations in science trade books. Variables from Coh-Metrix specifically addressing cause ("causal content," "causal cohesion," and "positive causal connectives")…

Although it is assumed that increasing the institutionalization (or maturity) of project management in an organization leads to greater project success, the literature has diverse views. The purpose of this mixed methods study was to examine the correlation between project management maturity and IT/IS project outcomes. The sample consisted of two…