The primary purpose of this study was to examine whether a general perceptual model developed by Vitz and Todd (1971), capable of dealing with multiple determinants of attending, is useful for understanding infant attending. The model, previously used in research with adults, assumes that perception can be represented as a stochastic sampling…

Angoff's method for identifying possible biased test items was applied to four computer-generated hypothetical tests, two of which contained no biased items and two of which contained a few biased items. The tests were generated to match specifications of a latent trait model. Angoff's method compared item difficulty estimates for two different…

Three different experiments were conducted to examine several variables that influence the recall of prose. In Experiment I a study was made of the influence of differing imagery level nouns as the subject and object of the preposition of a sentence; it also provided a further test of the conceptual peg model, i.e., the concrete-concrete-subject…

Combinatorial and implicative operations were studied with tasks which eliminated many complexities found in Piagetian tasks, but which did not alter the logical strategies required by Piaget's task. Task difficulty in relation to information-processing demands of tasks and processing capacities of subjects at three age levels (8.0-10.1 and…

This study attempted (1) to determine the ability of children to translate four basic sentence patterns varied according to three levels of structural complexity (single words, clauses, and phrases filling sentence pattern slots), and (2) to determine whether this knowledge is related to their reading comprehension. A test of grammatical structure…

This study sought (1) to discover ways to teach kindergarten children to listen to a rule that defines a concept and then to apply it, and (2) to learn if rule-learning is facilitated when the pupil is required to verbalize the rule while using it. The task used in the study (1) involves deductive reasoning, (2) requires rule utilization rather…

The Wisconsin model of conceptual learning and development specifies four levels of mastery in the acquisition of a concept. The levels of mastery are defined in terms of performance on tasks designed to measure each level. This paper discusses the internal operations or processes which are inferred as the mechanisms by which each level of…

Two experiments were performed using messages of digits presented auditorily at a rate of two digits per second. In both experiments, messages of seven different lengths were employed, consisting of 4 to 10 digits in Experiment 1, and of 2 to 8 digits in Experiment 2. The Ss were asked to recall them in the original order, and then to estimate the…

A battery of 10 intelligence tests was administered to 22 subjects under standard conditions. After the testing session the degree of perceived similarity between 5 tests of the battery was to be estimated with regard to: (1) the kind of intellectual activity required by the tests, and (b) difficulty. Estimated qualitative similarity, according to…

The purpose of the effort was to determine the benefits to be derived from the adaptive training technique of automatically adjusting task difficulty as a function of a student skill during early learning of a complex perceptual motor task. A digital computer provided the task dynamics, scoring, and adaptive control of a second-order, two-axis,…

The objective of this study is to identify some of the structural features of an elementary logic curriculum which affect logic problem difficulty. The system under review is a computer-based logic instructional system (LIS) at Stanford University. Four modes of problem presentation--multiple-choice, truth-analysis, counterexample, and derive--are…

A sample of scientists and engineers participated in a study designed to assess moderating influences of facets of perceived cohesiveness and collaborative problem-solving on the task characteristics-individual performance relationship between task difficulty and individual performance. (Author)

Two studies analyzed the complexity of structural organization in stories told spontaneously by 220 children ranging from 3 to 12 years of age. Results indicated that structural complexity increases with chronological age. (Author/JMB)

First-, third-, fifth-, and sixth-grade children were administered 20 relational reasoning problems in which they had to deduce the possible sizes of one item relative to two others on the basis of a visual comparison and a written clue. Dramatic differences were observed between fifth- and sixth-grade children. Corrective feedback improved…

Examined the pattern of higher level versus lower level deficits in brain-impaired children compared with normal children. Higher level functions included general neuropsychological functioning and verbal/academic skills; lower level functions included sensory and motor skills. Showed the brain-impaired group to be significantly poorer in each…