Research Findings: Parental expressivity, child physiological regulation (indexed by respiratory sinus arrhythmia suppression), child behavioral regulation, and child adjustment outcomes were examined in 45 children (M age = 4.32 years, SD = 1.30) and their parents. With the exception of child adjustment (i.e., internalizing and externalizing…

We tested an embodied account of language proposing that comprehenders create perceptual simulations of the events they hear and read about. In Experiment 1, children (ages 7-13 years) performed a picture verification task. Each picture was preceded by a prerecorded spoken sentence describing an entity whose shape or orientation matched or…

An analysis of the ubiquitous but taken-for-granted term "rigorous academic curriculum" reveals that by definition it is not an academically rigorous term. The term contains multiple meanings, negative connotations, and a constricted conception of the school curriculum. It is associated with a discredited learning theory and in practice…

Although the acculturation gap generally has been associated with poor mental health outcomes among Asian American children, some studies have failed to find a significant relationship between the gap and distress. Using two different methods of operationalizing the gap between mothers and their children, the current study addressed this tension…

Opinions differ on the importance of the native speaker's concept for language teaching and testing. This Commentary maintains that it is important and seeks to explain why. Three types of grammar are distinguished, the individual's, the community's and the human faculty of language. For first language teaching and testing it is the community's…

Usability testing on library search tools was conducted with ten students and eighteen library staff members at Syracuse University. The study addressed three research questions: (1) Do the ways in which librarians carry out search tasks on the library Web site vary from those of student users?; (2) Are those variations indicative of different…

Humphry (this issue) has written a thought-provoking piece on the interpretation of item discrimination parameters as scale units in item response theory. One of the key features of his work is the description of an item response theory (IRT) model that he calls the logistic measurement function that combines aspects of two traditions in IRT that…

Those who teach literacy usually accept the idea that reading, writing, and study strategies are developmental. Youngsters develop their literacy from birth on, and, to some teachers, dividing literacy education into steadfast designations such as early childhood, elementary, middle, secondary, and college learning (which may have pragmatic value)…

Objective: To assess beliefs about the role of diet in cancer prevention among individuals considering genetic testing for Lynch Syndrome. Design: Family-centered, cascade recruitment; baseline assessment of a longitudinal study. Setting: Clinical research setting. Participants: Participants were 390 persons, ages 18 and older, including persons…

The Internet has emerged as an important tool for the delivery of health promotion and disease prevention interventions. Our community-based participatory research (CBPR) partnership developed and piloted "CyBER/testing", a culturally congruent intervention designed to promote HIV testing among men who have sex with men (MSM) within existing…

Using the five intervention elements described by Dunlap et al. (2006) as a guide, the authors of this article reviewed the functional behavioral assessment (FBA) and function-based intervention research of the past 17 years (1990-2007), focusing on a component analysis of FBA and function-based intervention procedures. Thirty-five studies were…

This article discusses testing in counseling, the history of psychology's attempts to restrict access to testing, and the potential impact on the public. Counselors are encouraged to obtain appropriate training in assessment and to understand that testing is not only consistent with fair testing policies but also essential for ethical practice.…

Learning progressions are ordered descriptions of students' understanding of a given concept. In this paper, we describe the iterative process of developing a force and motion learning progression and associated assessment items. We report on a pair of studies designed to explore the diagnosis of students' learning progression levels. First, we…

The classroom is an emotional place. Students can be excited during studying, hope for success, feel pride in their accomplishments, be surprised at discovering a new solution, experience anxiety about failing examinations, feel ashamed over poor grades, or be bored during lessons. In addition, social emotions play a role and students also bring…

Recently, two of the authors (Amrein-Beardsley & Collins, 2012) studied the impact of Education Value-Added Assessment System (EVAAS), a value-added model used to judge Houston teachers' performance. They examined the cases of four teachers who were terminated in summer 2011, at least in part because of their subpar EVAAS scores. Talking to…