Causes of evaluator bias are: overemphasizing concrete, salient, and retrievable information; reporting only evidence which confirms hypothesis; focusing on stable personality factors, rather than on situation and environment; developing positive perceptions of a program as both an evaluator and a highly involved participant; statistical naivete;…

Symbolic interaction theory, exchange theory, and systems theory were major schools of thought in the 1970s. The general theory of the family may be unnecessary. Theorists in the 1980s should improve existing theory and continue to develop metatheory and methodologies of building theory. (Author)

Clark's Semantic Feature Acquisition theory of semantic development is reviewed and evaluated against the recent experimental literature with special reference to the acquisition of English antonyms. (Author/MP)

Describes the linguistic phenomenon of anaphora; surveys the approaches to anaphora undertaken in theoretical linguistics and natural language processing (NLP); presents results of research conducted at Syracuse University on anaphora in information retrieval; and discusses the future of anaphora research in regard to information retrieval tasks.…

Considers reviews of L. Daniels's article on editorial policy regarding statistical significance testing and concludes that the controversy is not over, although the gradual movement toward requiring additional information in the reporting of statistical results is viewed as a positive trend. (SLD)

Statistical significance reporting and use in educational and psychological research is reviewed. An assessment of the use of statistical significance in articles published in MECD from 1990-1996 is presented. The elements of statistical significance (including sample size, effect size, and power), interpretation of results, common erroneous…

This paper presents a synthesis of what is currently known about the nature and development of scientific reasoning and why it plays a central role in acquiring scientific literacy. Science is viewed as a hypothetico-deductive (HD) enterprise engaging in the generation and test of alternative explanations. Explanation generation and test requires…

Reading is a process of forming and evaluating hypotheses to account for the data in a text. Because of its complexity, the task of reading requires strategies for controlling the proliferation of hypotheses. Four of these strategies are (1) jumping to conclusions, (2) maintaining inertia (refusing to abandon a hypothesis in spite of contradictory…

Answers to theoretical questions about the place of input in a formal second language acquisition model are dependent on a distinction between two kinds of learner hypotheses. Type-N hypotheses require "negative evidence" for testing, while Type-P hypotheses are tested on the basis of "positive data" alone. (Author/CB)

Argues that R. Trapp's reservations regarding the characterization of Jackson's and Jacobs' conversational argument are unfounded. Reports several studies that use procedures similar to those employed by Trapp to confirm Jackson's and Jacobs' theory. Discusses reservations about using subject generated judgments as an unproblematic standard for…

Among the many theories attempting to explain sex differences in spatial ability, one of the most highly researched is the X-linked recessive gene theory. This is a review of the major research done on that theory and shows the conflicting nature of the results. (Author)

The "factor" analyses published by Schultz, Kaye, and Hoyer (1980) confused component and factor analysis and led to unwarranted conclusions. The principal factors method yields two factors which support the a priori expectation of a difference between intelligence tasks and spontaneous flexibility tasks. (Author/RD)

A wide variety of studies have offered glimpses of how learners put their second-language knowledge and skills to use during communication. It is shown that the same empirical findings can lead to very different conclusions. (49 references) (GLR)

Explains exploratory sequential data analysis (ESDA) and outlines ESDA characteristics that could help human-computer interaction investigators using sequential data make better conceptual and methodological choices. Behavioral, cognitive, and social factors are considered, and failures of expertise, time management, and databased problems are…

Describes a study designed to evaluate the performance of an experimental semiautomatic map cataloging advisor, Mapper, in the descriptive cataloging of single-sheet maps from U.S. publishers. Hypotheses tested are discussed, treatment of experimental and control groups is described, and it is reported that Mapper helped produce better cataloging…