Discusses five research areas offering guidance to people concerned about teaching problem solving in elementary schools. Areas are (1) components of problem difficulty; (2) the contribution of reading difficulties to problem-solving deficiencies; (3) characteristics of successful problem solvers; (4) children's use of problem-solving techniques…

Explored the effects of examiner familiarity, task complexity, and mode of response to the test performance of 79 speech and language impaired preschoolers who completed the Symbolic Mediation Test. Results showed children performed significantly better when tested by familiar examiners. Functioning did not depend on the task's complexity. (JAC)

Seven experiments were performed to address three issues: prose decisions of different levels of difficulty, directed attention effect, and the effects of decisions on memorability of prose among relatively good and relatively poor readers. (Author/PN)

Proposes that while teachers are teaching students how to write more complex sentences, they provide students with the techniques to read increasingly more complex sentences as well. (DD)

A two-stage design provides a way of roughly adapting item difficulty to test-taker ability. All test takers take a parallel stage-one test, and based on their scores, they are routed to tests of different difficulty levels in the second stage. This design provides some of the benefits of standard computer adaptive testing (CAT), such as increased…

This paper summarizes some of the basic concepts in test equating. Various types of equating methods, as well as data collection designs, are outlined, with attempts to provide insight into preferred methods and techniques. Test equating describes a group of methods that enable test constructors and users to compare scores from two different forms…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the viability of the property of parameter invariance for the one-parameter (1P), two-parameter (2P), and three-parameter (3P) item response theory (IRT) models for the Medical College Admissions Tests (MCAT). Invariance of item parameters across different gender, ethnic, and language groups and the…

This study explored whether the addition of the items with more advanced math content to the SAT Reasoning Test™ (SAT®) would impact test-taker performance. Two sets of SAT math equating sections were modified to form four subforms each. Different numbers of items with advanced content, taken from the SAT II: Mathematics Level IC Test (Math IC),…

The data from the present experiment suggest that distraction may interfere with attitude change by decreasing reception of the message, and may increase attitude change by increasing yielding to the message. (Authors)

Purpose of this study was to determine whether some major aspects of children's role-playing behavior can be coded reliably and whether role-playing behavior is related to role-problem characteristics and individual variables. (Authors)

It is suggested on the basis of these findings and others that the linear effect in previous studies is due primarily to a particular instructional set and is irrelevant to the study of uniquely semantic processes. (Author/CB)

Report summarizes the activities of a team of researchers in seven pre-school centers on Long Island, between October 1967 and April 1968. Aim of the project was to find a normative base for the construction of a new curriculum for pre-school children, in particular for those labeled disadvantaged.'' (Authors/CB)

Primary purpose of the experiment was to assess the effect of motivation, as manipulated by videotaping the experimental session, upon concept attainment. (Authors)