Background/Context: In Brazil, the 1920s and 1930s were characterized by initiatives intended to reform public school systems at the state level. As in the case of both educators whose work we analyze in this article, Brazilian educators traveled abroad searching for experiences that could help them think about the modernization of education in…

Acting upon target stimuli from the environment becomes faster when the targets are preceded by a warning (alerting) cue. Accordingly, alerting is often used to support action in safety-critical contexts (e.g., honking to alert others of a traffic situation). Crucially, however, the benefits of alerting for action have been established using…

Aberrant behavior refers to any type of unusual behavior that would not be expected under normal circumstances. In educational and psychological testing, such behaviors have the potential to severely bias the aberrant examinee's test score while also jeopardizing the test scores of countless others. It is therefore crucial that aberrant examinees…

Item response theory (IRT) refers to a family of mathematical models which describe the relationship between latent continuous variables (attributes or characteristics) and their manifestations (dichotomous/polytomous observed outcomes or responses) with regard to a set of item characteristics. Researchers typically use parametric IRT (PIRT)…

This dissertation aims to bridge the gap between validity theory and the practice of validation. The dissertation employs a three-article approach. Following the introduction in Chapter I, three independent manuscripts representing three empirical studies are presented (i.e., Chapters II - IV). Each chapter is a stand-alone publishable manuscript,…

We examined state evaluation anxiety, trait evaluation anxiety, and neuroticism in relation to New Zealand first-year university students' (n = 234) task performance on either a test or essay assessment. For both assessment types, the underlying components of state evaluation anxiety (cognitive worry, emotionality, and distraction) reflect…

While the research on report-writing time is sparse, there is evidence--some empirical, some anecdotal--that school psychologists are devoting more time than ever to report writing. Critics of common report writing practices have been calling for reforms for decades, proposing that reports should be more relevant, readable, and useful (Brenner,…

Federal law requires that psychoeducational evaluations be comprehensive, and utilize variety of assessment measures that evaluate the child's functioning along academic and cognitive domains as well as life skills outside of the classroom (Wiley, 2014) . Previous research suggests the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT; Harvard University Press,…

The mental health and psychological crisis of college students has aroused the attention of all walks of life. College students are unable to cope with various pressures, and crisis situations such as suicide are not uncommon. Solving the psychological crisis of college students is urgent. The psychological crisis of college students is a major…

The Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K-10) is widely utilized to assess non-specific psychological distress. However, when applied to COVID-19 pandemic experiences, its psychometric properties have not been examined. This study investigated the factor structure, reliability, and latent profile of K-10 using data from 3032 Filipino teachers…

Education of children with moderate to severe intellectual disabilities requires adequate assessment of their educational needs and potential to learn. Dynamic testing using analogical reasoning tasks may be a promising way to perform such an assessment. However, it remains unclear how dynamic testing with these children may be done in practice.…

There is a reliable association between poor reading and anxiety, but we do not completely understand the specifics of this relationship. The current study included a sample of children (N = 284; M[subscript age] = 9.30, SD[subscript age] = 1.31) who completed a reading (word, nonword, and text reading accuracy, word, nonword, and text reading…

The field of school psychology, built on a foundation of evidence-based practice, has produced an abundance of research to inform school-based practice. However, this empirical tradition has not been applied to the predominant activity in which school psychologists are engaged: psychoeducational assessment. Despite numerous critiques and proposed…

Clinical empathy has been identified as an essential skill for healthcare workers to provide quality healthcare. One teaching strategy for improving clinical empathy towards people with psychiatric disabilities is the Hearing Voices Simulation. This study used an explanatory sequential mixed methods design to evaluate change in clinical empathy…

Objective: Determine feasibility of a procedure to identify relationships between preexisting traits and immediate mindfulness meditation (MM) responses in novice college students. Participants: Twenty-four novice college students participated between September 2016 and April 2017. Methods: We measured trait mindfulness, attention and executive…