Five children, aged 7-10 years, exhibiting Developmental Verbal Apraxia (DVA) were evaluated to determine the presence of word-retrieval problems. DVA is a symptom cluster including at least some of 21 potential symptoms, such as delayed speech development and severe articulation disorder. The Boston Naming Test (a picture confrontation naming…

THE VALUE OF A NEW PROCEDURE FOR ASSESSING VERBAL PERFORMANCES OF SUPERIOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS WAS STUDIED. THE INSTRUMENT CONSISTED OF TWO PARTS. IN PART A, THE STUDENT WAS GIVEN AN ANALOGY AND ASKED TO IDENTIFY THE MOST LOGICAL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE TWO ELEMENTS IN IT. HE WAS THEN ASKED TO WRITE A DESCRIPTION OF THE RELATIONSHIP IDENTIFIED.…

The purpose of this study was to further examine the reliability of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT), a new instrument to measure hearing vocabulary so that a student's verbal intelligence may be inferred. A group testing procedure was utilized by reproducing the PPVT plates on 35 millimeter transparent slides and projecting them onto a…

This study investigated the relationships obtained among verbal imitation, comprehension, and production when a stimulus sentence exceeded the child's short term memory. A total of 32 children, aged 3 to 5 years, took tests of comprehension, nonverbal imitation, verbal imitation, and production of structures expressing sequence ("before", "after",…

This was an attempt to conduct a micro-investigation of teachers' verbal instruction. It was based on the assumption that there must be, within broad categories such as "explaining," both better and worse ways of using language to represent reality and/or to direct student behaviors. The subjects in the study were 20 experienced kindergarten…

This verbal memory study considers only simple sentences and examines learner performance under the two conditions of audio presentation and printed presentation. Learner performance is compared when required either to recognize sentences identical to those in the original list or, alternatively, to recognize non-identical sentences incorporating…

Verbal responses of 50 college freshmen were compared to determine whether any differences existed between the types of responses given by students listed as high or low in verbal ability according to the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT). The students, from two colleges, were tested individually using an experimenter-devised language inventory which…

Designed to investigate the performance of American Indian youth on the "Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children" (WISC) compared to the "Chicago Non-Verbal" (CNV) for the purpose of establishing validity and reliability of the measurement and appraisal tools, this study analyzed test data from 71 Indian youth (aged 11 to 15)…

A study was devised to determine the efficacy of picture sequencing as a method of evaluating a child's interaction with a film, particularly children who are low in verbal expression. A series of five photographs were used which illustrated important points in a film about the ill effects of smoking. Subjects were selected from two primary…

The purpose of this study was to develop and validate a set of semantic differential scales for measuring affective reactions of elementary school children. Fifty-five scales were developed for the concept "myself" and administered to 216 children in the second, fourth, and sixth grades. The results were analyzed for validity and for ontogenetic…

This research investigated the use of the Rasch simple logistic model in obtaining test-free ability estimates. Raw-score ability estimates were influenced by the difficulty of the items used in measurement but Rasch ability estimates were relatively independent of the item difficulty. (Author/CTM)

Comparison of verbal Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and California Achievement Test (CAT) scores of high school students who had (N=1,333) or had not (N=445) taken at least one year of foreign language study supported the conclusion that length of foreign language study was positively related to high SAT verbal scores. (CB)

Since The Graduate Record Examination-Verbal measures two factors (reading comprehension and discrete verbal ability), the unidimensionality of item response theory is violated. The impact of this violation was examined by comparing three ability estimates: reading, discrete, and all verbal. Both dimensions were highly correlated; the impact was…

This study investigated the hypothesis that females who score high on the Mathematical portion of Scholastic Aptitude Test do so because they have high verbal skills, whereas some males score high on the mathematics despite their relatively low verbal skills. Evidence for and against the hypothesis was observed. (Author/JAZ)

Between 1980 and 1984 SAT scores rose 8 points for whites and 15 points for non-whites, but the overall mean increased only 7 points. This article explains that this is not an arithmetic error, but an example of a statistical phenomenon called Simpson's Paradox. It describes how to avoid it. (JAZ)