The study compared the written expression of 56 fourth to fifth grade remedial readers and achieving readers. Significant differences favoring the achieving readers were found in three areas: productivity, syntax, and level of ideation. Remedial readers tended toward the same kinds of errors as achieving readers but with an increased frequency.…

Shows how and why errors get introduced into examples in computer software documentation and what actions technical communicators can take to minimize this occurrence. Proposes a method to test examples. Suggests that technical writers can avoid these sources of error by creating and implementing a good test plan, maintaining and updating the…

Describes a study conducted at the University of South Carolina that examined the frequency of occurrence of several types of errors in a sample of natural language queries submitted by users requesting online searches in information retrieval systems. Implications for system design are suggested, including parsing systems. (28 references) (LRW)

First, second, and fourth graders listened to stories containing an inconsistent goal and outcome. Children provided a causal inference for the inconsistency, and attributed the inference to themselves or the story. Children's attributions were related to whether the story contained causal information linking the inconsistent events. (BC)

Reports on a case study where an individual's errors in productive tasks are analyzable as functions of morphological properties of the target and/or the response. It is shown that the morphological errors are explainable in the context of a two-stage retrieval system applying to both affixed and unaffixed words. (33 references) (JL)

In three experiments, a total of 148 college students read or listened to expository passages containing general or specific errors. In all 3 experiments, students were more likely to spot general errors. Results do not indicate that monitoring skills were substantially different for listening or reading. (SLD)

Three experiments explored determinants of two-year olds' perseverative errors in a search task. Found that active search, even in the absence of observation, produced perseveration on post-switch trails, but mere observation did not. Results indicated that active search is required to elicit perseveration, which points to failures of response…

Discusses basic strokes, stroke sequence rules, and motor aspects of drawing in writing Chinese characters. Finds mastery of proper stroke sequence is low even for familiar characters. Discusses three main groups of errors children made. Explores educational implications for the teaching of stroke sequences in the teaching of handwriting based on…

Five experiments tested hypothesis that the A-not-B error results from general processes that make goal-directed actions to remembered locations. Findings showed that 2-year-olds' performance on the A trial was accurate. When the object was hidden at Location B, searches after 10-second delay were biased in the direction of Location A. This bias…

This study attempted to predict spelling errors of 222 children (grades 4-6) from their performance on pseudohomophone choice and rhyme matching tasks. Analysis showed that both accurate and rapid choice of pseudohomophones sounding like real words and rhyme matching contributed substantially to variations in spelling. (Contains extensive…

Sample-size restrictions limit the contingency table approaches based on asymptotic distributions, such as the Mantel-Haenszel (MH) procedure, for detecting differential item functioning (DIF) in many practical applications. Within this framework, the present study investigated the power and Type I error performance of empirical and inferential…

The aim of this study was to investigate the types of errors produced by three participant groups (individuals with Down syndrome, with moderate learning disability, and typically developing children) whilst completing the Raven's Coloured Progressive Matrices task. An analysis of error categories revealed that individuals with Down syndrome…

We report the case of a patient who showed a marked deficit in compound reading after almost complete recovery from his aphasic disturbances. Omission of one of the two compound components was his most frequent type of error. The patient also produced many paraphasias, which always respected the compound structure of the target. Similar errors…

This exploratory study investigated the rate of citation errors in the reference lists of five social work journals. High error rates have been found in journals in fields such as medicine and psychology but have not yet been investigated in social work journals. A stratified, computer-generated random sample was selected (N = 500, 100 per…

We tested human performance on the Euclidean Traveling Salesman Problem using problems with 6-50 cities. Results confirmed our earlier findings that: (a) the time of solving a problem is proportional to the number of cities, and (b) the solution error grows very slowly with the number of cities. We formulated a new version of a pyramid model. The…