This paper is concerned with the role of meaning and understanding in the acquisition of computational skill in subtraction. Evidence on the syntactic nature of subtraction errors is reviewed, with common "bugs" described. Then, data collected from interviews with four children are summarized in terms of their semantics of concrete…

Assessment data and other research findings on fractions are briefly reviewed. These indicate that students are able to add and subtract fractions but have substantial difficulty finding and using common denominators. Selected results for nine-year-olds from the first and second national assessments of mathematics are used to portray what students…

Spoonerisms can be elicited by having the subject articulate a target preceded by bias items. Any systematic difference in rate of errors between similar targets must result from processes after recoding of target into its slip. Editing processes make lexical outcomes more frequent than nonsense outcomes. (CHK)

The National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 1972 (NLS) employs a combination of mail, telephone, and personal interview data-gathering techniques. The NLS quality control process begins with editing each returned questionnaire to determine if certain key items are answered and if responses are consistent. If the respondent failed…

A research project is discussed involving the collection of production data from writing samples of 375 adult learners of English divided equally among five language backgrounds: Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Persian, and Spanish. Information is presented about three constructions: (1) subject relative clause, (2) infinitival complement on verb, and…

During the 1975-76 academic year student response data were saved for a group of 17 freshman music majors as they worked through 15 units of harmonic dictation exercises delivered on the University of Delaware's Graded Units for Interactive Dictation Operation (GUIDO) system. Analysis of the student data base led to the identification of seven…

The paper addresses provisions for a diagnostically based remedial component for children manifesting clear and specific learning disabilities in mathematics. A model, the interactive unit, upon which a sequential program that systematically minimizes learning disabilities on mathematics performance is introduced. It is explained that the…

This report analyses justifications gathered in a series of studies which led intellectually normal infants' school and nursery school children and mildly mentally retarded special day school children to acquire conservation understanding. Two hundred and five children were given a pretest of number, mass, length, liquid, and weight conservation.…

This study compared the comprehension monitoring skills of learning disabled (LD) and normal elementary school children. Comprehension monitoring, the ability to evaluate one's level of understanding of incoming messages, was assessed using two separate tasks. In the first (referential task), the child took the role of the listener in a…

This discussion of student output concentrates on reasons for learner's errors, types of errors, and some techniques for correcting them. An error is defined as an unintentional deviation from an expected pattern, which could be a linguistic form, a phonological or a grammatical rule, or an incorrect form or expression in a particular situation.…

Children aged three to six were shown drawings of three objects that were identical except for differences in size in one or both dimensions. Each child was asked to determine if one object was the tallest. A missing feature model was not supported, since a child was often correct for some items and incorrect for others. Errors were partially…

Empirical Bayes point estimates of true score may be obtained if the distribution of observed score for a fixed examinee is approximated in one of several ways by a well-known compound binomial model. The Bayes estimates of true score may be expressed in terms of the observed score distribution and the distribution of a hypothetical binomial test.…

The question of whether the Black English dialect affects the spelling performance of children who speak Black English is explored in this paper. Evidence is cited from existing research to show that Black English speakers make significantly more dialect-related errors than do non-Black English speakers. The various Black English features which…

It is hypothesized that the use of an empirical indicator of a theoretical construct implies certain epistemic assumptions about the nature of the construct. In this study, the implications of assuming interval level of measurement using various isomorphic monotonically increasing epistemic alternatives to a commonly used occupational status index…

The two experiments investigated stimulus novelty which may affect reward and nonreward in a discrimination learning situation at different ages. The first experiment compared two types of "trial one" stimulus procedures on error tendencies following reward and nonreward. The two procedures differed with respect to novelty effects. One group was…