The distant nature and purposes of social work education programs at different educational levels, which prepare persons for social service roles at different levels of practice, lack systematic and generally acceptable difinitions. The newest and least understood direct service practitioners are graduates of community college social work…

In research conducted "over a period of 20 years" on aptitudes of high level personnel, the purpose was to analyze thinking abilities or processes into their unique components. The approach was through study of individual differences in performance on intellectual tasks varied systematically over broad ranges of psychological functioning.…

A method is presented by which decision makers may establish priorities for the collection of data to be used as input to the decision-making process. It is assumed that the experience, intuition, and previously collected data will influence the decision, as will the constraints of design, and the audience to whom the particular decision is…

In this study, a systems methodology was devised for determing knowledge and skills common to piloting tasks required by differing aircraft missions to form a data base for developing a task oriented flight training program. The general approach was to identify and classify specific tasks performed by Air Force pilots, with the required level of…

Description of an objective method for assigning weights to questions on examinations includes discussions of classical test theory, knowledge organization, and how task analysis can be used to identify knowledge elements required to solve specific problems, rank them, and assign objective weights to exam questions using a Pareto distribution (7…

Discusses recent developments in instructional psychology relative to cognitive task analysis, individual difference variables, and cognitive models of interactive instructional decision making, which use constructs developed within the field of cognitive/information processing psychology. (Author/WBC)

The study of human-computer interactions has revealed that highly interactive devices are often easier to learn to use than keyboard-based devices. Describes an integrated cognitive model designed to exhibit interactions between people and computers while learning task-action mappings such as the action sequences for opening a file in a word…

There is strong interest in strategy instruction and in conducting research on the topic, with many researchers developing strategy interventions for both normal and learning disabled populations. Experiment design has become both methodologically sound and conceptually convincing. A comprehensive research program requiring both laboratory and…

Described is the "Taxonomy of Community Living Skills," a guide for curriculum developers. Experts (n=59) in mental retardation were surveyed to assess the taxonomy's coherence, appropriateness, completeness, etc. Responses to the model's five domains (personal maintenance and development, homemaking and community life, vocational,…

A conceptualization of test theory is discussed that addresses issues of weight and coverage of evidence for statements framed in recent educational/psychological paradigms. Implications for language assessment built around the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages' guidelines are considered. (26 references) (Author/CK)

Investigated a model of metalinguistic awareness, which consists of two components (the control of linguistic processing and the analysis of linguistic knowledge), in children between the ages of five and seven years. Each of the two components was assessed by four metalinguistic tasks. (Contains 35 references.) (JL)

Describes the Task-Technology Fit model that provided the conceptual basis for the assessment of the impacts on the end-users of the Integrated Information Center (IIC) at the University of Minnesota. A chart of the Technology-to-Performance Chain is included. (JAK)

Stuttering has been considered a heritable disorder since the 1930s. There have been different models of transmission that have been proposed most involving a polygenic component with or without a major locus. In spite of these models, the characteristics being transmitted are not known. This study used two different tasks--a tapping task that is…

Using nonword repetition tasks as an experimental approach with both adults and children has become quite common in the past 10 to 15 years for studying lexical learning and phonological processing (e.g., Bailey & Hahn, 2001; Gathercole, Frankish, Pickering & Peaker, 1998; Munson, Edwards, & Beckman, 2005; Storkel, 2001; Vitevich & Luce, 2005). In…

The aim of this research is to reveal the dynamics of focus on form in task completion via videoconferencing. This examination draws on current second language learning theories regarding effective language acquisition, research in Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) and empirical data from an evaluation of desktop videoconferencing-supported…