Crowdsourcing is a process in which a firm parcels out work to a "crowd" and offers payment for anyone within the crowd who completes the task determined by that firm. A growing number of behavioral scientists have begun using the Mechanical Turk (MTurk) to facilitate their research and practice, but there is apparently not one academic…

Three experiments investigated responding consistent with transitive class containment, a feature of hierarchical classification. Experiment 1 replicated key components of a preliminary attempt to model hierarchical classification (Griffee & Dougher, 2002) and tested for responding consistent with transitive class containment. Only 2 out of 5…

Models of a psychological process can be difficult to discriminate experimentally because it is not easy to determine the values of the critical design variables (e.g., presentation schedule, stimulus structure) that will be most informative in differentiating them. Recent developments in sampling-based search methods in statistics make it…

The contribution of facet theory to applied psychological research is shown to be its ability to define problems and the solutions to them in terms relevant to those wishing to make practical use of research findings. Three examples illustrate the use of facet theory in applied research. (Author/CM)

Discusses the basic character of qualitative, humanistic research, identifying its philosophical and theoretical commitments. Provides a taxonomy of investigative strategies employed, including naturalistic inquiry, contextualization, maximized comparisons, sensitizing concepts, and analytic induction. Classifies methods employed as participant…

A counselor response category system for measuring counselor verbal behavior was developed. The resulting system had 17 mutually exclusive categories, with at least minimal face and content validity. In rating counselor response units, the category system resulted in high agreement levels between judges. Analysis led to a revised 14-category…

An attempt at defining and describing those factors which most often jeopardize the validity of naturalistic behavioral data is presented. A number of investigations from many laboratories which demonstrate these methodological problems are reviewed. Next, suggestions, implementations, and testing of effectiveness of various solutions to these…

This review of research discusses how children with autism may acquire equivalence classes after learning to supply a common oral name to each stimulus in a potential class. A proposed methodology for researching referent naming and class formation, analysis of stimulus classes, and generalization is offered. (CR)

Two experiments explored the question of when people will respond to negative labels by confirming them and when they will respond by disconfirming them. (Editor)

The empirical study of knowledge representation is the focus of this paper, which observes that language as the cognitive instrument in the communication of phenomena must be capable of expressing relations of the observer-observation kind. The paper points out that this implies a coopeartive process at work in the production of a text, of which…

This study undertakes to clarify the concept of a normative basis for curriculum research by considering four possible interpretations: (1) a set of substantive moral principles, (2) such a set taken as an integral part of a putative curriculum theory, (3) a meta-strategy governing curriculum decisionmaking, or (4) the norms which specify the…

Criteria and methods for developing a taxonomy for different situational categories are presented. (CK)

Designed for teachers and researchers interested in the study of the composing process, this guide introduces a method of analysis that can be applied to data from a range of different cases. Specifically, the guide offers a simple, direct coding scheme for describing the movements occurring during composing that involves four procedures: teaching…