The influence of task difficulty on aberrant behavior was investigated with three severely handicapped students (10, 13, and 15 years old). Noticeably higher rates of problem behavior occurred in demand compared to no demand conditions. In addition, there were higher rates of problem behaviors on difficult versus easy tasks. (Author)

Two hundred and sixty-six kindergarten, first, second, and third graders completed four tasks measuring their understanding of two aspects of number concepts -- ordinality and cardinality. Data suggest that children acquire understanding of ordinality prior to cardinality. (Author/MP)

Two cognitive tasks (construction of space and recognition of space) were developed to test the emergence of three spatial concepts ("in", "on", and "under"). Subjects were 60 Israeli children between 18 and 30 months of age. Scalogram analysis and analysis of variance confirmed that "in" concepts developed…

Scores within the chance range are differentiated, "uninterpretable" scores being those that demonstrate randomness (broadly defined) by failing to achieve typical levels of correlation with group-determined difficulty. The relevant literature is reviewed. Finally, randomness and uninterpretability are examined in light of the…

Examines stability of individual differences in behaviorally induced heart-rate reactivity in 34 boys presented a cognitive task. Task-related heart-rate reactivity revealed substantial and highly reproducible individual differences in heart-rate reactivity independent of subjects' task performance. (Author/DB)

Syllogisms with missing conclusions, missing minor and major premises, as well as missing negative conclusion and missing conclusion to a class chain, were given to 160 gifted children (20 each from ages 4-11) to investigate the order of difficulty of certain principles of logic and the age at which these principles are acquired. (MP)

Aesthetic preferences for overlapping geometrical figures were studied in subjects ages 6 through 14 in the context of the theory of functional pleasure. Results confirmed the hypothesis that the complexity level (number of crossings) of the preferred stimulus varies with the subjects' perceptual capacities, which develop with age. (Author/SJL)

A 22-question interview was conducted with 41 severely hearing impaired students at tht National Technical Institute for the Deaf in order to compare speech intelligibility in communicating social and technical information and in responses which varied in message predictability. (Author/PHR)

Results of an informal experiment conducted with five seven-year-olds and three nine-year-olds suggest that being able to infer well from a piece of reading material does not necessarily prevent children from making mistakes at the level of literal comprehension. (GT)

Concludes that the Spache and Harris-Jacobson readability formulas are quite similar in variables used, in the way they were developed, and in statistical characteristics; notes differences in the Fry graph and raises questions about its suitability for measuring the readability of primary grade reading materials. (ET)

It is suggested that in French foreign language instruction, especially in Canada, four language levels be distinguished: scholarly, neutral, familiar, and popular. Instruction based on these distinctions will encourage more realistic use of language skills. (MSE)

Relationships among patterns of answer changing and item characteristics on multiple-choice tests are discussed. Results obtained were similar to those found in previous studies but pointed to further relationships among these variables. (Author/GK)

This study investigated the relationship between response style in college course evaluation and cognitive complexity of respondent. A significant relationship was found between a measure of cognitive complexity and within subject variance on the course evaluation instrument. (Author/JKS)

Describes an extension to the Rasch model for fundamental measurement in which there is parameterization not only for examinee ability and item difficulty but also for judge severity. Discusses variants of this model and judging plans, and explains its use in an empirical testing situation. (SLD)

Examined factors affecting the difficulty of verbal analogies in a psychometric examination by characterizing 104 analogies using 5 defined attributes. Both knowledge and process attributes were found to contribute to the difficulty of verbal analogies assessed by 10 judges. (SLD)