A study examined the effectiveness of English dictionaries in assisting in error correction by beginning learners of English as a second language. Lexical errors made in examinations were collected and coded by type, and the usefulness of the "Longman Active Study Dictionary", designed for ESL learners, in helping to correct the errors was…

A study was undertaken to develop guidelines for the interpretation of the parameters of three multidimensional item response theory models and to determine the relationship between the parameters and traditional concepts of item difficulty and discrimination. The three models considered were multidimensional extensions of the one-, two-, and…

The "Test Development Notebook" is a resource designed for the preparation of tests of literal comprehension for students in grades 1 through 12. This volume contains 120 multiple-choice cloze exercises taken from front page stories, feature stories, and editorials of newspapers; and the accompanying answer key. Each exercise carries the code…

The "Test Development Notebook" is a resource designed for the preparation of tests of literal comprehension for students in grades 1 through 12. This volume contains 120 multiple-choice cloze exercises taken from news magazines, and the accompanying answer key. Each exercise carries the code letter of the section to which it belongs.…

The effects of age, task, and egocentric responding on visual-spatial perspective taking were studied among 41 preschool children between 3.0 and 5.9 years of age. Children were individually administered three perspective-taking measures: the upside-down/right-side-up task, a block task, and a picture box task, all previously described in the…

The test items in this booklet are sample life skill items representative of those found in the California Adult Student Assessment System (CASAS) Item Bank. The items are arranged in four sections--A, B, C, and D-- from easy to difficult. A four-digit coding system is used to define each item. The first digit represents the content area: consumer…

The purpose of the present investigation was to sample the range of texts selected by 21 students in sustained silent reading in a single fourth-grade classroom. Using a sampling technique developed by French and Foster (1992), single pages from sampled texts were evaluated. The evaluation found that most students were reading fiction (n = 14),…

In order to investigate the effect of experimenter-controlled reading speeds on the literal comprehension of multilevel reading passages and to assess the effects of operant-regulated, or self-regulated, conditions on reading speed, these two studies sampled a total of 400 eighth graders. Two passages, originally written at the eighth-grade level,…

The unified theory described in this paper characterizes human reasoning as an information processing system with a hierarchical sequence of components and subtheories that account for performance on successively narrower tasks. Both deductive and inductive theories are subsumed in the unified componential theory, including transitive chain theory…

Two variables involved in attitude change provided the basis for this study, the cognitive complexity of the subject and the dimensions of stimulus materials. After a pretest, 165 interpersonal communication students were divided into two groups according to their cognitive complexity levels. The dimensions of the stimulus were presented on two…

The purpose was to test the assumption that nonspecific facilitated learning of a second prose passage occurs in the situation in which an initial passage read by the subjects contained concrete referents designed to increase the comprehension of a difficult to understand second passage. Results supported the assumption. (Author/BJG)

Analyses of student responses to Introductory Psychology test questions were discussed. The publisher supplied a two thousand item test bank on computer tape. Instructors selected questions for fifteen item tests. The test questions were labeled by the publisher as factual or conceptual. The semester course used a mastery learning format in which…

A research study was conducted to determine the effectiveness of using computer assisted instruction (CAI) to teach handwriting. Designed to take advantage of the computer's facility to rapidly transfer large amounts of precise data, the handwriting program used a computer-connected pen as the interface between learner and machine. Nine boys…

This investigation experimentally examines a networking learning strategy involving an information processing strategy that relates to the internal cognitive organization of to-be-learned information and its effects upon the learning of field-dependents. The learning behavior of field-independents is also compared to that of field-dependents with…

Two studies investigated the relationships between readability, prior knowledge, and interest in the material being read. In the first study, 169 college freshmen read cloze passages of materials from the Nelson-Denny Reading Tests, then one week later read the whole passages and completed the related multiple choice questions. A control group…