Describes how social service caseworkers in child welfare may become more sophisticated consumers of psychological assessments, and how collaborative relationships between evaluating psychologists and caseworkers can be fostered. Considers the appropriate uses of psychological tests, formulating referral questions, preparing children and parents…

In this article, we emphasize that the Rasch model is not only very useful for psychological test calibration but is also necessary if the number of solved items is to be used as an examinee's score. Simplified proof that the Rasch model implies specific objective parameter comparisons is given. Consequently, a model check per se is possible. For…

This study investigates the current research practice concerning reporting measurement validity evidence based on a sample of 696 research reports listed in the American Psychological Association's Directory of Unpublished Experimental Mental Measures. Only 55% of the reports included any type of validity evidence. This was a substantially lower…

We carried out the first neuropsychological study of a series of patients with functional amnesia. We evaluated 10 patients, first with a neurological examination and then with three tests of anterograde amnesia and four tests of retrograde amnesia. Excluding one patient who later admitted to malingering, all patients had a significant premorbid…

Orlando and Thissen (2000, 2003) proposed an item-fit index, S-X[superscript 2], for dichotomous item response theory (IRT) models, which has performed better than traditional item-fit statistics such as Yen's (1981) Q[subscript 1] and McKinley and Mill's (1985) G[superscript 2]. This study extends the utility of S-X[superscript 2] to polytomous…

Objective: Previous cross-sectional studies in adolescents with early-onset schizophrenia (EOS; onset of psychotic symptoms by 18 years of age) have reported patterns of generalized neurocognitive deficits as compared to healthy comparison subjects (HCSs). Here, the authors examined the longitudinal stability of neuropsychological deficits in…

When embedded within a continuum of mental health services including both prevention and treatment, school-based mental health identification programs can promote improved academic and mental health functioning among students. This article describes the scientific status of assessment instrumentation that may be used for early mental health…

Under the suppositional account of conditionals, when people think about a conditional assertion, "if p then q," they engage in a mental simulation in which they imagine p holds and evaluate the probability that q holds under this supposition. One implication of this account is that belief in a conditional equates to conditional probability…

The application of psychological testing is largely an attempt to derive probabilistic statements regarding the likelihood of occurrence of client states, choice outcomes, situational antecedents, and behavioral outcomes. Counseling psychologists share with others the occupational requirement of having to deal with uncertainty in test results and…

An adaptive network model is proposed to represent the structure and processing of knowledge. Accessibility of subjects' stored information was measured. Relationships exist among (a) frequency of verifying a test relation, (b) other relations involving concepts used to evaluate test relation, (c) frequency of verifying those relations. (CHK)

The effect of a realistic noise level (typing) on the intellectually challenging task of proofreading was examined. The results indicate noise subjects were poorer at identifying grammatical errors, worked slower and less steadily. (Author/DE)

Thirty female nurses were given a nine-hour death education course. The results were lower scores on the death anxiety test. (Author/DE)

Expands upon the Farley (1967) study in three ways: (1) use of experimental manipulation of social desirability response set rather than correlational analysis, (2) use of the recent revision of the Sensation Seeking Scale, and (3) inclusion of sex comparisons. (Author)