When subjects are given open-ended stimulus situations allowing for responses at all possible stages of a developmental theory, the stage scores of individuals for each situation can be treated as scores on polychotomous items. Extensions of the concepts of difficulty and discriminating power from the dichotomous case to this ordinal category…

Sixty subjects participated in an experiment involving estimation of difficulty of items in a test of reasoning ability. The estimates were to be given both according to conventional conditions of magnitude estimations with a preassigned comparison standard and according to a modified procedure of magnitude estimation where the comparison standard…

Four studies with infants and preschool-age children examined various pattern perception tasks considered to be related to the perceptual basis of the development of reading skills. Study 1 used 28 neonates to test the hypothesis that supplemental stimulation (rocking, patting, holding) has measurable effects upon attention to visual patterns.…

This paper traces the concept of complexity as it has been employed in empirical investigations of organizations over the last decade, presents a brief description of a doctoral dissertation in which complexity was one of the key variables, and then offers some summary comments on the utility of the complexity variable for school analysis. (Author)

Mean response times and slope of response times were correlated with intelligence and achievement for 94 sixth-graders. Mean response time reliability was greater than that of slope, and correlated significantly with IQ and achievement. Speed of processing information generalized across experimental tasks and reliably indicated intellectual…

A study assessed and compared the syntax in the oral language of six-, seven-, and eight-year-olds with the syntax in the written language of reading instruction textbooks prepared for children of the same age. (HOD)

Performance on high and low level objective test items were compared for two groups of business writing students. Students in individualized classes with one teacher for 50 students did as well on high level tasks as did students in traditional classes with one teacher for 25 students. (Author/GDC)

Presents results from a study of job analysis and job satisfaction data collected from 236 secretaries in Ohio to determine differences in job dimensions and job satisfaction, aptitudes for secretarial work, and correlations among three secretarial categories: traditional, administrative support, and word processing. Includes implications and…

A highly reproducible scale of difficulty of word identification tasks was identified for both good and poor readers: consonant-vowel combinations and short vowel words were learned first. Long vowel words, special rule words, and nonsense words were more difficult. Reading instruction should parallel this sequence since it follows learning…

High-level behavioral objectives did not produce greater learning than low-level, contrary to previous findings using study questions interspersed through written prose. Overt use of objectives at both levels produced greater learning, supporting the idea that procedures requiring semantic encoding are instructionally superior to those requiring…

Emphasis on the systems approach in economic and social studies education demands attention to hierarchical analysis and sequencing of desired skills and instruction according to valid learning hierarchies. Learning hierarchies are arrangements of intellectual skill objectives in a pattern of prerequisite relationships among simple and complex…

Evidence is provided for gradual age (and, seemingly, cognitive developmental) changes in the acquisition of complex problem solving strategies. Differential performance as a function of exposure to a child-model exhibiting the best strategy also suggests the role of learning in strategy acquisition. (Author/MV)

Significant differences were found between teacher emphasis of the memory and application levels of Bloom's Taxonomy and pupil achievement at those levels. At the memory level, differences in achievement were probably not due to differences in ability. At the application level, differences in pupil achievement may be due to ability, not teacher…

Shows that word discriminability and contextual complexity have significant developmental effects on word identification, reflecting the growth of meaningful reading with age. (RL)

Test development included designing, screening, and field testing of test items; compilation into an examination administered to a target group; and norm development for score comparison with a national sample. (MSE)