Differential test performance by undergraduate males and females enrolled in a developmental educational psychology course (n=167) was reported on a quantitative examination as a function of item arrangement. Males were expected to perform better than females on tests whose items arranged easy to hard. Plake and Ansorge (1982) speculated this may…

A 16-item evaluation form is presented to aid in selection of appropriate computerized game materials for preschool children. The form was derived from a 32-week-long study involving 66 children 3, 4, and 5 years of age who were allowed to play computer games during free play or work time while attending a modified Montessori preschool program. In…

A possibility for improving library output measures would be to incorporate in catalog entries and charging codes a symbol indicating the type or level of difficulty of each adult non-fiction title. Experiments were conducted by the Public Library Research Group to define such categories. (Author/LS)

The purpose of this study was to investigate the interactive effects of cognitive complexity and directorial style on changes in actors' perceptions of self-worth and in their cognitive complexity and effects on their attitudes toward a particular theatrical task. Authoritarian and democratic directorial styles were examined. Subjects, 32 members…

Results indicate that for the task of generating counterexamples to invalid syllogisms, a primary source of difficulty is the first step of forming the negation of the conclusion, especially if the conclusion is a "Some are not" statement. When this step is done for the subject, most of the errors disappear. (Author/BJG)

The task consisted of categorizing a set of slides depicting concepts of freedom, nonfreedom, justice, and nonjustice. The results of the analysis indicated that abstract thinkers performed significantly better than did concrete thinkers and that performance increased as a function of grade level. (Author/BJG)

The relative apparent difficulty of physics concepts at the grade 11 and 12 level was examined using a questionnaire survey addressed to all physics teachers within the providence of British Columbia. The physics courses were described using 22 concepts to cover the Physics 11 course and 30 concepts to cover the Physics 12 course. Subjects were…

This exploratory study on the College Board's Admissions Testing Program (ATP) Physics Test can be divided into two main parts, each designed to address a specific set of questions: Part I, Are there any systematic differences in male/female performance on individual items or subgroups of items that can help in interpreting the differences between…

The problem engendered by the Matching Familiar Figures (MFF) Test is one of instrument integrity (II). II is delimited by validity, reliability, and utility of MFF as a measure of the reflective-impulsive construct. Validity, reliability and utility of construct assessment may be improved by utilizing: (1) a prototypic scoring model that will…

One method of evaluating comprehension and language growth consists of analyzing the oral or written answers to questions about stories read to or by students and about visual representations. The method is applicable to various content areas at all levels of instruction. The T-unit or communication unit, the linguistic unit that cannot be further…

The present experiment tested the hypothesis that effort attribution given for prior achievement is effective in promoting subsequent achievement behaviors. Forty children drawn from two elementary schools and lacking in subtraction skills received training and opportunities to solve subtraction problems. In the context of training, children…

This study was designed to examine complexity of maternal language to 4-, 6-, and 8-month-old male and female infants in a laboratory situation as measured by mean length of utternace (MLU), frequencies of certain sentence types, and other syntactic indices. Subjects were 36 mothers and their infants. There were six male and six female infants at…

This analysis involved the ten events of the men's decathlon in all performances which scored 8,000 points or higher, based on the 1962 Scoring Tables of the International Amateur Athletic Federation. It attempted to (1) determine the interrelationships among the events and the final scores, (2) look for areas of difference compared to sub-8,000…

Elementary school teachers chosen for their effectiveness in consistently producing achievement gains in their pupils were observed to determine how difficult a teacher's questions should be for students to learn the maximum amount of material. The collected data, correlated with residualized student achievement gain scores (averaged over four…

Current views both of reading and of understanding spoken language conceptualize the process of deriving meaning as similar to hypothesis testing. The listener or reader is seen as selecting whatever information is required to confirm the hypothesized meaning. In the present study, 60 children (12 each in grades four through eight) reworded…