Recent research has suggested consonants and vowels serve different roles during language processing. While statistical computations are preferentially made over consonants but not over vowels, simple structural generalizations are easily made over vowels but not over consonants. Nevertheless, the origins of this asymmetry are unknown. Here we…

This primer should provide the reader with a deeper understanding of the concept of test validity and will present the recent available validity evidence on the relationship between SAT® scores and important college outcomes. In addition, the content examined on the SAT will be discussed as well as the fundamental attention paid to the fairness of…

Problem Statement: Literacy skills are extremely important for all individuals, especially children with autism, because these skills provide a channel for educational assessment and learning as well as enhance vocational opportunities, promote self-expression, and facilitate independent living. Some individuals with autism cannot acquire academic…

The majority of large-scale assessments develop various score scales that are either linear or nonlinear transformations of raw scores for better interpretations and uses of assessment results. The current formula for coefficient alpha (a; the commonly used reliability coefficient) only provides internal consistency reliability estimates of raw…

Many students with complex disabilities (e.g., moderate and severe disabilities, autism spectrum disorder) require explicit instruction in social skills in order to respond to and initiate interaction with their peers. This article reviews the research on developing social skills groups to teach peer interactions for students with complex special…

The current study examined how form-focused instruction (FFI) with and without corrective feedback (CF) as output enhancement facilitated second language (L2) perception of Mandarin tones at both the phonetic and phonological levels by 41 Cantonese learners of Mandarin. Two experimental groups, FFI only and FFI-CF, received a 90-min FFI treatment…

According to the Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English 1999 by Biber et al. (p. 266) generic article uses are more than twice as common in academic English than in conversation or fiction. This is an area that English for Academic Purpose (EPA) textbooks and teachers would need to target more than general English teaching. This paper is…

This article presents a case study incorporating English teachers' perspectives into the development of a large-scale international English assessment, the recently developed "TOEFL Junior"® Comprehensive test. It discusses how stakeholder feedback gathered during test development supports the validity argument for score interpretation…

Research Findings: Shared book reading provides a meaningful context for rich conversations to occur between a child and an adult and offers opportunities for children to be exposed to a range of vocabulary and concepts that often extend beyond their everyday experiences. Few studies have examined parent-child shared book reading as a context for…

For pediatric nurses, their competence in EBP is critical for providing high-quality care and maximizing patient outcomes. The purpose of this pilot study was to assess and refine a Web-based EBP educational intervention focused on improving EBP beliefs and competence in BSN-prepared pediatric bedside nurses, and to examine the feasibility,…

Rule-governed behavior is generally considered an integral component of complex verbal repertoires but has rarely been the subject of empirical research. In particular, little or no previous research has attempted to establish rule-governed behavior in individuals who do not already display the repertoire. This study consists of two experiments…

We assessed developmental stability and context generalizability of temperament in pigtailed macaques ("Macaca nemestrina") from the University of Washington Infant Primate Research Lab. A principal components analysis condensed 6 behavioral measures into 2 components, interpreted as reactivity and boldness. Changes in these measures over the 1st…

Machismo continues to be a defining aspect of Mexican American men that informs a wide array of psychological and behavioral dimensions. Although strides have been made in this area of research, understanding of the role of this construct in the lives of gay men remains incomplete. Our purpose in this study was to gain a deeper understanding of…

Two experiments explored learning, generalization, and the influence of semantics on orthographic processing in an artificial language. In Experiment 1, 16 adults learned to read 36 novel words written in novel characters. Posttraining, participants discriminated trained from untrained items and generalized to novel items, demonstrating extraction…

The purpose of this study was to determine if an intervention consisting of contingently imitating play, modeling expansions of play actions, and describing play actions increased the diversity of object play in young children with disabilities. The multicomponent intervention was introduced in a multiple-probe design across three young children…